How can lasers control the growth of new blood vessels?

Heart failure is a major health care problem with high mortality.

How does the extracellular matrix coordinate endothelial cell behavior during angiogenesis, and how do metabolic waste-products and matrix-degrading enzymes produced by the tumour modify the extracellular matrix so as the change the cellular coordination?

New technology offers many new possibilities for research, such as on dementia. ‘Organ-on-a-chip’ is a new technology in which small bits of organ are grown out of stem cells on a small plastic plate. A small piece of blood vessel, heart or nerve offers many new possibilities for research, such as…

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.

Researchers at Leiden University have demonstrated that tumours can apply mechanical means to attract the blood vessels they need to be able to grow. The team published this discovery on 2 March in Nature Scientific Reports.

PhD candidates in medicine, Wouter Jan Geelhoed and Nan van Geloven, are the winners of the Leiden preliminary round of FameLab. They are through to the final on 22 April.

In her inaugural lecture on 11 September, Miranda van Eck, Professor of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Therapeutics, addressed her research related to developing medications to keep our blood vessels clean.

How can the development of constrictions in the blood vessels be reversed?

Sonja Boas developed new techniques to study vascular growth computationally. The results of her research provide a better understanding into mechanisms behind vascular growth, which is relevant to the development of medical therapies. She defends her thesis 'Computational modeling of angiogenesis'…

Tiny selenium particles could have a therapeutic effect on ischemic brain strokes by promoting the recovery of brain damage. Pharmacologists, including Alireza Mashaghi from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research discovered that selenium nanoparticles inhibit molecular mechanisms that are responsible…

Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe

There are around 300,000 people in the Netherlands who donate blood on a regular basis. Women can give blood up to three times a year and men up to five times, resulting in approximately one million blood donations each year. Patients that receive this donated blood are already in a vulnerable condition,…

Amerindian intra- and inter-insular relationships and social organization in the pre-colonial Windward Islands.

Atherosclerosis (thickening of the artery wall) is the most common cause of heart attacks or strokes, and one of the most common causes of death in the western world. People with this condition have to take medicine all their lives, so a vaccine for atherosclerosis would be a breakthrough.

The aim of this thesis was to develop novel treatment strategies for different types of eye melanoma utilizing zebrafish models. We first establish orthotopic and ectopic xenograft models for uveal and conjunctival melanoma by engraftment of the immortalized cells derived from these tumors into zebrafish…

Promotor: Prof.dr. R.M.H. Merks

Alexander Kros studies supramolecular systems in a biological environment. The unifying theme between the projects in my lab is specific molecular recognition, i.e. the intermolecular interaction between complementary molecules with high affinity and selectivity. Studying, imitating and dissecting processes…

The research in this dissertation aims to optimise blood donation processes in the framework of the Dutch national blood bank Sanquin. The primary health risk for blood donors is iron deficiency, which is evaluated based on donors' hemoglobin and ferritin levels.

Promotor: Roeland M.H. Merks

The intradermal administration route is attractive for vaccine delivery, because of the highly populated antigen-presenting cells in the skin. However, the skin’s main physical barrier, the stratum corneum, prevents vaccines from entering the skin.

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…

In this research project, we aimed to obtain more insight in the role of mast cells in the immune driven disorders rheumatoid arthritis and atherosclerosis.

We are very happy to welcome you to spend a semester or year studying or doing an internship with us at the Leiden University Medical Center. Here you will find information on your course timetables and registration.

During embryonic growth, cells proliferate, differentiate, and collectively migrate to form different tissues at the right position and time in the body.

Leiden-Yale collaboration uncovers a tale of samurai same-sex love in a library manuscript.

Is it possible to diagnose diseases using molecular switches? The new international consortium LogicLab will address this question. Leiden chemist Sylvestre Bonnet and Leiden pharmacologist Thomas Hankemeier are involved in the project. LogicLab will run for four years and will receive over 3.5 million…

Mathematics forms the basis of many innovations in technology, the service industry and science, such as data analysis and coding, artificial intelligence, weather or climate change modelling or understanding molecular processes. The researchers from the Mathematical Institute (MI) are constantly developing…

How can we improve the treatment of thrombosis, reduce the disease’s impact and spend less money while we’re at it? This is what Erik Klok, Professor of Internal Medicine and an internist, is researching. He will discuss it in depth in his inaugural lecture on 10 March.

Mechanics play a larger role in blood vessel formation, and other developmental biology, than previously thought. Cells appear to respond to mechanical signals, such as pressure. Through the extracellular matrix, a network of fibrous proteins, cells can supposedly exchange those mechanical signals over…

Research at the SBC group is comprised of the following research themes:

Treatment and care for cancer patients is becoming increasingly advanced. For example, surgeons can now perform operations with much greater precision, and therapeutic vaccines are being developed to prompt the patient’s immune system to fight cancer. Work is also being done on better early diagnostics,…

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…

Thanks in part to the persistence of a Leiden research group, cancer could be detected in the near future with just a single drop of blood. Not only can the diagnosis be determined at an earlier stage, but the blood test is also cheap, fast and patient friendly. The first results of this method seem…

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…

Leiden molecular cell biologists in the research group of Annemarie Meijer have discovered novel early macrophage-specific genes in zebrafish, including a signal transducer pivotal for the migration of macrophages in the innate immune response to bacterial infection. Their findings were published on…

Nanoparticles that transport medicines to a specific part of the human body are usually broken down in the liver prematurely. Jeroen Bussmann from Leiden University has discovered a new method to prevent this from happening. Publication in ACS Nano.

The Sanquin blood bank gathers data on every donation. Around 720,000 donations are made every year. ‘That generates a mountain of highly valuable data,’ says Leiden PhD candidate Marieke Vinkenoog.

As of 1 July, Professor of Mathematical Biology Roeland Merks has got a full appointment at Leiden University. Before this expansion, he worked one day a week at the Mathematical Institute (MI). Merks will work half of his full appointment at the MI and the other half at the Institute of Biology Leiden…

Cardiovascular diseases are the primary cause of death in the world with atherosclerosis as primary underlying cause.

'When taking into account all finds in the Islamic world of this enigmatic vessel, it would perhaps be wise not to restrict this container to merely one function.'

Three Leiden researchers have been awarded a prestigious Vici grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). They each receive 1.5 million Euro to develop their own research project in the coming 5 years.

Of the 87 Vidi research subsidies awarded by NWO, five have been awarded to Leiden researchers. This represents almost 6 per cent of the successful applications.

Leiden researchers found a way to measure the tiny forces exerted by pericytes, one of the most elusive, hard to research cell types, which occur in tiny blood vessels. Building on this fundamental science, researchers may eventually find treatments for medical conditions like ischaemia.

Fishes rely heavily on sound to find their way during migration or dispersal. Many species are affected by noise pollution. Hans Slabbekoorn from the Institute of Biology Leiden received a HORIZON2020 grant of 500,000 euros to study the impact of sound conditions on movement decisions of fishes.

We use zebrafish as a model organism to study human development and disease as well as animal welfare and environmental impact.

Research organisation NWO has awarded a VICI grant to five Leiden researchers. In total, 32 leading researchers in the Netherlands have been awarded a VICI grant.

Dying from viral infection due to organ failure and blood loss: we still know little about how it can happen. Among other things, Huaqi Tang developed an organ-on-a-chip to figure it out. 'These technologies can offer unprecedented opportunities to fight the viruses that threaten our society.' Tang…