Our research in the area of safety sciences aims to increase the mechanistic understanding of cellular toxicity of drugs and, in a broader sense, chemicals.

Research in this group, headed by Gerard van Westen, focusses on computational methods integrated in different parts of the drug discovery process. More specifically, topics include innovative treatments for cancer, selectivity modeling, translational research, allosteric modulation, drug resistance…

For optimization problems, it is often unclear how to choose the most appropriate optimization algorithm. As such, rigorous benchmarking practices are critical to ensure we can gain as much insight into the strengths and weaknesses of these types of algorithms.

Improving healthcare with our scientific discoveries: that is the goal of pharmaceutical research at Leiden University. And there’s a lot involved in that. Our research starts with the discovery of the effect achieved by a particular substance, and sometimes continues all the way through to the development…

In this research group, headed by Prof. Erik Danen, the aim is to unravel cellular signaling mechanisms in normal and diseased cells, with a long-standing interest in cell adhesion signaling. In complex multicellular organisms such as ourselves, a division of labor emerges where different tissues and…

New or improved treatments for chronic and acute illness.

This thesis is based on five papers on several topics.

This thesis focuses on addressing four research problems in designing embedded streaming systems.

Human and animal cells are very complex: very different chemical processes are going on at the same time, but they are separated from each other because the cells are divided in compartments. These compartments may also have a profound effect on the potential efficacy of therapeutics, because the drug…

Mechanisms fro drug resistance

Despite recent advances in medicine, many devastating disorders like cancer and cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases still lack effective treatments. In order to address this challenge, we, as scientists from Leiden University, joined hands in the LED3 network. LED3, for Leiden…

There are many complex links in the chain that provides patients with new drugs: from fundamental science, to clinical tests, to production. The entire chain can be found in Leiden. Leiden University, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the businesses at the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP)…

Hospital pharmacies face significant challenges: the demand for sterile drug reconstitutions is increasing, while specialized personnel remain scarce. Automation offers a potential solution, but its practical implementation in hospitals is still unclear.

Multi-objective optimization is an effective technique for finding optimal solutions that balance several conflicting objectives. It has been applied in many fields of our world, because practical problems usually have more than one desired goal. For example, developing a new vehicle component might…

Promotor: E.F.A. Deprettere, Co-Promotor: A.C.J. Kienhuis

In this research group, headed by Bob Van de Water, cell signaling programs that underlie adverse drug reactions as well as cancer development and progression are unraveled. Adverse drug reactions involve cell injury in critical target organ cells which leads to the activation of cellular stress response…

A novel mathematical model describes spatial-temporal drug distribution within one or more brain units, which are cubic representations of a piece of brain tissue with brain capillaries at the edges.

In the literature, several types of microneedles have been extensively described. However, porous microneedle arrays only received minimal attention. Hence, only little is known about drug delivery via these microneedles. However, porous microneedle arrays may have potential for future microneedle-based…

Lecture

We cover the entire spectrum from target identification to the evaluation of the efficacy and safety of novel medicines in clinical practice.

Lecture

Utilizing the polymeric platform of polypept(o)ides, this thesis describes synthesis and investigation of novel triblock copolymers to obtain carrier systems with multiple compartments for efficient siRNA delivery. Although the individual microstructure of nanoparticles differs depending on the polymeric…

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water, Co-promotor: L.S. Price

Discovery of metastasis promoting candidate drug targets

In the last decades, activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) has emerged as a powerful chemical tool that may aid the ever-challenging drug discovery process.

A next, general pharmacological problem to be tackled is how drug-target binding kinetics in vivo, affects target occupancy as an important indicator of the time-course of drug effects.

Supervisor: Lizi Xia

Harm reduction in practice: a comparative analysis of the Dutch and Brazilian approach towards drug users.

High-throughput holistic preclinical screens are increasingly used in drug discovery, to assess both drug efficacy and drug safety.

Plants and their pollinators form complex interaction networks. Within these networks, species differ widely in the number of species they interact with.

Researchers from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the Leiden-based biotech company Ncardia have joined forces to develop a new platform that enables the automated production of 3D cardiac microtissues. This platform will allow large numbers of drugs to be tested quickly

Lecture

This thesis describes the design, characterization and application of dextran based crosslinked network.

Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela published the article 'Pedagogies of Prohibition: Time, Education, and the War on Drugs in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte' in Cultural Anthropology 37. The article’s three sections focus on three forms of temporal control—busyness, punctuality, and rhythm—and each demonstrates…

Can we develop a generic method for Quan/Qual analysis of small molecule drugs, their metabolites and endogenous metabolites in (pre-)clinical samples?

Research and design are becoming more and more important in international science education. In The Netherlands, two recently introduced subjects focus on research and design activities in the classroom: O&O (research and design) and NLT (nature, life and technology). This research aims to look at what…

Although rarely considered by the pharmaceutical industry or clinicians, 24-hour rhythms in physiology are a factor of potential influence on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs.

Source: ChemMedChem (2015)

During the course of drug discovery translational steps are made.

Source: Biosens Bioelectron, Volume 74, pp. 233-42 (2015)

This study aims to explore the use of a behavioral-design-based approach in simulating patient flow through EMTs. It provides a dynamic behavioral simulation model to assess the interactions between patients, staff members, and the related dynamic movements/interactions with the health care facility,…

Promotor: Prof.dr. A. P. IJzerman, Co-Promotor: Dr. L.H. Heitman

This thesis describes the importance of being able to control the selectivity of potential drug candidates.

Another research line is the development of a spatial CNS drug distribution model, by ultimately including the 3-dimensional anatomical organization of the CNS.

Quantum annealing belongs to a family of quantum optimization algorithms designed to solve combinatorial optimization problems using programmable quantum hardware. In this thesis, various methods are developed and tested to understand how to formulate combinatorial optimization problems for quantum…

Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP, also termed chemical proteomics), is one of the pillars of chemical biology, and at LED3 we have taken it to the next level. ABPP allows the assessment of protein function in live cells and tissues, which means that the activity of a complete protein family can…

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