In the next decades, thousands of wind turbines will be added to the North Sea. Environmental scientist Chen Li identified the most beneficial areas for their construction, focusing on material use, carbon footprint, and environmental impact. His paper was published in Environmental Science & Techno…

Cardiovascular diseases are among the most frequent causes of death in the world. The main underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases is the development of atherosclerosis in the medium and large-sized arteries.

Getting motivation, courage and tools to find a job that will help you tackle the climate crisis: it is at the heart of the course ‘Designing Your Career as a Climate Changemaker’. With their final presentations, the students conclude this climate-specific skills module within the Designing Your Life…

In prehistoric times there was a huge wave of migration, from the steppes in Russia and Ukraine to West Europe. The newcomers’ genes began to dominate. Archaeology research in Leiden into burial mounds in the Veluwe and Utrechtse Heuvelrug areas of the Netherlands yielded this spectacular conclusion.…

A team of five PhD students from Leiden University is in the running for first prize in the Pharmacometrics Skills Competition. In a drug development simulation, they apply their mathematical pharmacological skills to solve clinical problems. On 24 March they will compete in the finals in Orlando, F…

Key publications of the Quantitative Pharmacology group

A tantalizing concept that has emerged in our recent research is binding kinetics. An important parameter is residence time (RT), a direct reflection of how long a drug stays bound to its target. This parameter is of crucial importance, because drug action lasts only as long as the receptor-ligand complex…

Key publications of the Quantitative Clinical Pharmacology group

In this project, we aim to obtain a quantitative understanding of the role of the immune system in tumor regression, of the role of tumor cell heterogeneity in cancer growth and of tumor cell migration properties.

This thesis explored the molecular pharmacological mechanisms of targeting CB2R via investigation of novel drug discovery concepts such as target binding kinetics, allosteric modulation and biased signaling.

Sometimes an idea seems so logical and elegant at first glance, that you later wonder why no one thought of it before. Two researchers from LACDR have teamed up to develop a completely synthetic alternative to antibodies—one that mimics their size, shape and function, but which is cheaper, more stable,…

Metal-containing molecules combine geometrical features and a reactivity that are inherently different from that of organic molecules. My research focuses on light-activatable metal-based anticancer drugs and metal-functionalized liposomes. Light is a very selective way to activate photosensitive drugs…

What does it mean to do “global research”? Global studies is an emerging field that focuses on transboundary, international, and global processes and systems, such as climate change, global social media, and globalization. These issues call for researchers to think beyond conventional state actors or…

With the What's Next? series we hope to inspire current Media Technology MSc students, show the variety of paths taken after the studies, and bring together alumni. Editions of the series are generally organized around a particular theme by Media Technology MSc students themselves, and followed by social…

With the approval of the preliminary design (PD), an important milestone has been reached in the design process for the Aleida Nijland building. This means that the key functional and spatial decisions have now been finalised. The future users of the building – LUCL, part of LUCAS, lab users, LAK, ATC,…

Students from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK) designed the 450 lustrum logo.

The receptor nomenclature committee of IUPHAR, the International Union of Pharmacology, has several subgroups. Among these are a few that our division is involved in, those for adenosine, nicotinic acid, and GnRH receptors.

Graphene and other layered materials combine into completely new substances. Leiden physicists establish the ground rules for designing such materials by measuring how the layers in the stack interact. Publication on November 29 in Nature Communications.

PURPOSE: To determine the effect of elasticity on the skin permeation of ketoprofen from surfactant-based vesicular formulations and elastic liposomes.

Hackers and Designers Summer Academy 2020 will take place remotely from July 20-25

The Department of Medical Microbiology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) is researching antiviral drugs that could treat and prevent SARS-CoV-2 in various projects. One part of the PanCoroNed project is being led by Martijn van Hemert and involves lab tests into the antiviral effect of molecules…

The American president Trump is considering military intervention in Mexico to get rid of the drug cartels once and for all, but Mexico is not interested in other countries' interventions. According to Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Trump's much…

On 8 April 2022, Jan Aart Scholte gave a keynote lecture on ‘Multistakeholderism: Prospects of an Institutional Design’ at the T.M.C. Asser Institute.

The METIS instrument that’s being built for ESO's future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Northern Chile under the leadership of the Dutch Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) has reached an important milestone: the preliminary design has been approved.

Since the start of the Corona crisis, several COVID-19 related research and teaching projects were started at LACDR. The computational and teaching activities started right away, as well as a large-scale metabolomics screening program by Thomas Hankemeier’s group. Other experimental activities are still…

Can small molecule drugs restore the immune system’s ability to fight tuberculosis by boosting autophagy?

A new computer simulation shows the promising possibilities of the booming field of topology. Smartly designed mechanical structures carry sound exclusively one way and are immune to fabrication errors. Publication on 17 July in Nature Physics.

With the What's Next? series we hope to inspire current Media Technology MSc students, show the variety of paths taken after the studies, and bring together alumni. Editions of the series are generally organized around a particular theme by Media Technology MSc students themselves, and followed by social…

Nanodiscs are small, disc-shaped structures designed to mimic biological cell membranes, composed of a lipid bilayer stabilized by scaffold proteins. Membrane proteins play crucial roles in essential processes such as nutrient and waste transport, molecular recognition, and cell signalling, making them…

Simone van der Hof, professor of Law and Digital Technology at eLaw, has joined the EU Special Group on Code of Conduct for age-appropriate design as an expert.

In order to optimize treatment, it is necessary to closely monitor and manage the patient’s health status by means of ‘precision diagnostics, personalized prognosis and targeted therapy’. The specialisation combines the techniques and applications of these sensing (monitoring) and stimulation techniques.…

The Biomedical Metabolomics Facility Leiden (BMFL) is the core metabolomics facility of Leiden University and the Metabolomics and Analytics Centre (MAC). We offer a highly structured environment for advanced MS-based metabolomics studies and build on fully validated, state-of-the-art assays that each…

Promotor: M.A.G.J. Orrit

Target selectivity is an important aspect of any drug molecule, and certainly a parameter to be optimized. That is not trivial for a number of reasons. First of all hundreds of drug targets (receptors, enzymes, ion channels) exist, and no single lab in the world has assays for all of them.

Immunologist Leender Trouw specialises in the complement system, which is part of the immune system. In some diseases drugs help activate or inhibit this system. This is best done ‘in the right place at the right time’ − the title of his inaugural lecture.

In this thesis, a system pharmacology approach, integrating metabolomics, pharmacology and chemical biology, was applied to understand and modulate the endocannabinoid system across different model systems (cells, zebrafish, mice and humans).

By 2050, more than 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities. A group of International researchers has developed software that shows city planners where to invest in nature to improve people’s lives and save billions of dollars.

In dermatology, there should be a high level of multidisciplinary collaboration among institutes and specialists, Professor of Translational Dermatology, Robert Rissmann, will say in his inaugural lecture on 8 July. He is building an infrastructure that will put pre-clinical and clinical skin research…

Two Leiden researchers have been awarded ERC Proof of Concept grants. These grants, each worth EUR 150,000, will help the grantees in their efforts to bridge the gap from basic science to real-life applications

The disease acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is characterized by fast progression and low survival rates.

The clinical potential of applying synthetic lethality to cancer treatment is famously demonstrated by the BRCA1/PARP1 paradigm: a tumor specific defect in BRCA1 – a component of the DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair pathway homologous recombination (HR) – results in a remarkable sensitivity to PARP1…

Promotor: E. Bouwman, Co-promotor: S. Bonnet

The zebrafish is a promising vertebrate model organism in early drug discovery and development.