This thesis describes the design, synthesis, and immunological evaluation of varying (neo)antigenic peptide conjugates containing either a TLR2 or a TLR7 agonist.

Finding structure in disordered proteins and developing drugs for undruggable diseases: it might sound like mission impossible, but pharmacologist Alireza Mashaghi and his team are right on top of it. Their project was awarded by NWO through the Open Competition Domain Science -XS, a competition that…

Leiden chemical biologists led by Dr Mario van der Stelt have developed a method to facilitate the search for new drugs. This method has allowed them to take an important first step in the development of a drug against obesity.

This thesis investigates a pharmacological challenge model induced by Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) activation, focusing on skin inflammation and its implications for early drug development.

Does a drug enter into the human brain once administered in the body?

Whilst government’s ability to design ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy is generally assumed to depend on the region’s decision-making power, the aim of this study is to investigate how regional government matters. In order to open up the black box of policy design, the study develops a…

Developing new medicines is one of modern science's most significant hurdles, a process marked by high costs, long timelines, and frequent failures of promising candidates.

Immediately connect with the needs of industry with your master’s degree. The new course Practical Aspects of Quality Management in Pharma and Biotech provides just that. The LACDR and LUMC set up the course together with the Biotech Training Facility, located at the Leiden Bio Science Park. The first…

Psychedelic drugs like magic mushrooms and LSD are embraced by some and seen as lethal by others. Cognitive psychologist Michiel van Elk delved into the world of psychedelic drugs and wrote a surprisingly sober book about them. ‘Without first-hand experience my story wouldn’t be complete.’

The first index to measure product safety, sustainability, and circularity, operationalising the EU’s (SSbD) framework.

Promotores: Prof.dr. G. Miley & Prof.dr. J.M. van den Broek

How can we prevent drug-induced liver and kidney damage? PhD candidates Marije Niemeijer and Lukas Wijaya investigated what happens in the cells during the onset of this damage: a stress response. Both focused on a different subtopic and made some interesting discoveries.

In February 2023, the International Institute of Air and Space Law and the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum for International Humanitarian Law organised a seminar on the topic of 'The optimisation of the use of satellite information in the humanitarian domain – Legal and space-related developments' at Leiden…

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy is a non-destructive analytical technique that is used to study the nature and characteristics of molecules with an atomic level precision. It has a wide range of applications especially in synthetic chemistry, biological and biochemical research groups…

Bioprinters that enable scientists to engineer complex tissues and organs. It sounds like science-fiction, but not for the scientists of the Alireza Mashaghi lab at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. The lab has recently been equipped with two state-of-the-art bioprinters: BioX and LumenX+.…

Partly thanks to Roy de Winter, ship design and engineering company C-Job Naval Architects now develops optimal ships in a short time. The master's student Computer Science from Leiden developed the CEGO algorithm, which eliminates the classic design cycle and makes people in the maritime optimization…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Co-promotor: O.E. Della Pasqua

The central issue of this research concerns how students can best be supported in their study choice, study career and future orientation with a view to flexible entry and transitions and perspective in education and work.

Many pharmaceutical companies no longer have their own lab and are working more closely with universities and start-ups of scientists. Professor of Science-Based Business Simcha Jong is researching how scientific ideas result in new drugs, including at the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP).

Electoral Systems and Turnout: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design. In this article, published on the website SAGE research methods, authors Jaroslaw Kantorowicz and Tobias M. Hlobil discuss how a Regression Discontinuity Design can be executed.

This thesis focuses on enhancing predictions of central nervous system drug exposure using the LeiCNS-PK3.0, a physiologically based pharmacokinetic model.

Global healthcare is on the verge of an antibiotic availability crisis as bacteria have evolved resistance to nearly all known antibacterials. Identifying new antibiotics that operate via novel modes-of-action is therefore of high priority.

Bringing your drug candidates to patients is what many academic chemists dream about, but the road to this goal is long and bumpy. Now, Leiden small molecule nizubaglustat is ready for phase 3 clinical trials. This is thanks to a €132 million funding secured by the biotech spin-out Azafaros.

The aim of current study was to develop a dried inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) formulation with minimal loss during the drying process and improved stability when compared with the conventional liquid IPV.

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 18, pages 82–84 (2019). The implications of target saturation for the use of drug–target residence time Wilbert de Witte, Meindert Danhof, Piet van der Graaf, and Elizabeth de Lange

Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

Light can be used to apply forces on single cells. Focused lasers have been used by physicists to tweeze particles and to manipulate them. These so called “optical tweezers” can be used as mechanical phenotyping tools for characterising the mechanics of materials and living objects.

PhD candidate Dennis Wander searches for the best of both worlds. That is to say: a cancer drug that is effective and also has minimal side effects. To this end, he makes new molecules inspired by two existing medicines. And not without result: ‘We have created a new variant that is very promising.’…

Sugar excipients, needed to stabilize medicines, can be unsafe for patients due to an impurity discovered recently by Daniel Weinbuch. ‘The biopharmaceutical industry should now consider new excipient quality criteria for safer drug development,’ he says. PhD defence on 13 December.

On the 6th of March 2023, Santino Regilme presented his work-in-progress titled 'Global Drug Wars: Contested Normative Orders of Peace, Security, and Human Rights'. If the battle against illegal drugs is construed as a war, how is victory in such a war defined and constructed? If the oppositional…

Research conducted at Leiden has established that guts-on-chips respond in the same way to aspirin as real human organs do. This is a sign that these model organs are good predictors of the effect of medical drugs on the human body. Publication in Nature Communications on 15 August.

Do medicines arrive in the right amount at the right spot in our brain? By making a model that depicts our brain in small 'brain blocks', Esmée Vendel tries to find an answer to this question. Her new, mathematical model predicts the concentration of medicines in the brain over time and space. Vendel…

It takes years to develop new medicines, from the test tube to trials in humans. During the process it often happens that a drug that seems promising in the initial stage has to be dropped in a later phase. This costs time and money. Leiden University and the LUMC are working closely together to make…

Cancer research generates massive amounts of data, but traditional tools often fail to fully harness their potential. How can we unlock this data to provide better treatments for cancer patients? PhD candidate Marina Gorostiola González explored this by using advanced data analysis techniques to guide…

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subtype of breast cancer characterized by limited treatment options and unfavorable clinical outcomes. Therefore, the research described in this thesis focused on the exploration of novel targeted therapies for TNBC.

Drugs-related violence in Mexico is similar in terms of dynamics and strategy to the IS hybrid war in the West. This is the claim made by Teun Voeten. PhD defence 20 September.

Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process. Leiden University, the LUMC and other partners will implement this new way…

From studying molecules in the blood of corona patients to developing a new concept for vaccines. The Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) has transformed many ongoing projects into Covid research projects. Hubertus Irth, scientific director of LACDR, talks about the role of his institute…

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. A. Bouwstra, Prof.dr. W. Jiskoot

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…