A cancer pill, preferably without severe side effects, is something we’d all welcome. Is it a matter of time before such a pill is a reality? We put this question to three Leiden researchers and asked how they themselves are contributing to new cancer treatments.

Biological chemist Nathaniel Martin and his team received an NWO grant to examine how blocking a specific enzyme in our body, NNMT, could be helpful in the treatment of some cancers. Trials with mice have been promising, and together with the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Martin wants to take the next…

Can effective synergists be identified to enhance the effect of antibiotics against Gram negative pathogens?

To inhibit proteins that contribute to the growth of aggressive cancer cells, that’s the plan of Professor Bob van de Water and his team. They will receive over 700,000 euros from the KWF Dutch Cancer Society for their research. Researcher Maaike Vreeswijk and pathologist Danielle Cohen are affiliated…

Since the start of the Green Office, several projects have been initiated to increase awareness amongst staff & students and to make the university more sustainable. Read all about our current projects here.

The immune system plays a paradoxical role in the spread of breast cancer. Some immune cells contribute to metastasis, while other cells can be activated to strengthen the effect of chemotherapy. Kelly Kersten made this discovery in her PhD research. PhD defence 7 February.

How can you ensure that more experimental drugs reach the finish line? At the moment, only one in twenty cancer drugs that are tested on humans makes it to the market. This is an enormous loss for patients and society. With a grant from the National Growth Fund, Oncode-PACT aims to efficiently select…

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

Winning a prestigious award for PhD researchers, even before you have your doctorate: that's what Yascha van den Berg managed to do with his research proposal on alternatively spliced tissue factor, a protein that may be involved in tumour growth. Van den Berg: ‘It all started as a Friday afternoon…

Promotor: A. Kros

The GMP Facility facilitates development and production of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and chemical (peptide) synthesis.

The adenosine receptors are proteins that reside in the extracellular membranes of cells. Activation of adenosine receptors plays a role in many physiological and pathological processes, such as immune responses and cancers.

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Ewa Snaar-Jagalska, Shuning He and colleagues from IBL, LION and LACDR reported on a new zebrafish study to understand micrometastasis of human cancer cells. They discovered a novel role for neutrophils in assisting metastasis formation, which provides critical insights for anti-cancer therapies.

Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

This project develops a scientific method to extract clinically relevant new information from patient forum websites that discuss patient experiences concerning e.g. medication, nutrition, co-morbidities, genetic factors etc.

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, , Co-Promotor: Young Hae Choi

Arts and leisure

We already know a lot about genetics and the risk of breast cancer. But much still needs to be done in breast cancer genetics to improve the prognosis and make sure women at high risk aren’t missed. This is what Professor by Special Appointment Marjanka Schmidt will say in her inaugural lecture on 4…

Roll your sustainable sleeves! Our students and staff have found various ways to do just that, both at home and at our university.

Leiden biophysicist Stefano Coppola has received the prestigious AXA Research Fund postdoctoral fellowship. With this grant he can work for two years on a project to research the role of mechanical factors in the development of pancreatic cancer.

Researchers from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) have discovered how specialised immune cells can detect and remove cancers that are ‘invisible’ to the conventional defence mechanisms of the immune system. Their work has been published in Nature. The findings…

Promotores: Prof.dr. H. S. Overkleeft, Prof.dr. G. A. van der Marel

In the search for new medicines against diseases such as cancer, a Leiden team has developed a new workflow. This approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) with molecular modelling and is suitable for finding unknown and innovative drug structures, the researchers proved.

When internist Christian Blank made his very first discovery, his field of immunotherapy was the underdog of cancer research. Now, over 20 years later, Blank has been appointed Professor By Special Appointment of Internal Medicine for his clinical research into immunotherapy and will give his inaugural…

Cell biologist Erik Danen has been awarderd a grant of half a million euros to study how tumor cells spread throughout the body en develop drug resistance. This was announced mid-August by the Dutch Cancer Society Fund (KWF).

Clinical development of drugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders has been particularly challenging and still suffers from high attrition rates.

This project’s aim is to critically assess current homicide data sources in order to develop a proposal for long-term EU-level monitoring of DRH.

Chemical biology research at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry is aimed at understanding biological processes at the molecular level to strengthen the knowledge base of human health and disease. The approach to achieve this goal is a fundamental chemical one; with the aid of chemical probes biological…

Developing robust algorithms and theory for establishing cause-effect relationships from observational data that scale up to large data sets

In this thesis, the discovery and optimization is described of chemical tools to study the N-acylethanolamine (NAE) biosynthetic pathway.

Exploring the mechanism of targeted nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery using the zebrafish model

The aim of this thesis is to expedite and ensure the systematic accuracy of clearance scaling from adults to paediatric patients, with a special focus on drugs undergoing hepatic metabolism.

The research conducted at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research is clustered within the divisions of BioTherapeutics, Drug Discovery & Safety and Systems Biomedicine and Pharmacology, and the Metabolomics and Analytics Centre.

A breakthrough from the PhD research of medical chemist Elmer Maurits may help patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancer in the future. But bringing a discovery from the lab to the clinic is not so easily done. Thanks to NWO's Venture Challenge, Maurits and his team will receive ten weeks of…

Analysis of drug adversity

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…

With a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros, Professor of Mathematical biology Roeland Merks will look for ways to fix messy and leaky blood vessels in tumours. His research combines mathematical simulations and lab experiments in a unique way.

Solute carrier (SLC) transporters are a large and diverse class of relatively understudied transmembrane proteins.

Leiden chemists have developed a new technique with which they can determine the role of kinases – a group of proteins – in a living cell. This technique makes it easier to find new drug targets for diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The team published the findings in the journal Nature…

Promotor: G.P. van Wezel, Co-promotor: Y.H. Choi

The path to rational drug and dose selection

From descriptive to physiological models that can predict oral absorption and elimination of CYP3A substrates across the pediatric age range.

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has spent the past five years coordinating an international study of genetic mutations and breast cancer risks. The results will make it easier to determine which genes increase the risk of breast cancer and to what extent. The researchers published their results…