Project TARGET aims to improve our understanding of gun violence in Europe and the relationship between gun violence and firearms trafficking.

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa is a Gram-negative bacterium which can form biofilms, increasing its resistance against antibiotics and the host immune system. Polysaccharides are an integral part of this biofilm, one of these polysaccharides is called Psl. PslG is a glycosidase, able to cleave this polysaccharide,…

This thesis describes the synthesis and biochemical evaluation of a variety of cyclophellitol based activity-based probes and inhibitors targeting various endo- and exo-acting retaining glycosidases. In the last two decades a variety of probes and inhibitors for (hemi)cellulose degrading enzymes have…

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

Chemotherapy that does nothing until you irradiate it with light. Sylvestre Bonnet receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros for the development of this treatment. The Leiden chemist wants to build a new molecule to fight tumours that are at the time still difficult to treat.

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.

How do lipases in Mycobacterium tuberculosis help the bacteria survive, and can we target them to create new antibiotics?

The cannabinoid CB2 receptor (CB2R) represents a promising therapeutic target for various forms of tissue injury and inflammatory diseases. Although numerous compounds have been developed and widely used to target CB2R, their selectivity, molecular mode of action and pharmacokinetic properties have…

The chemical synthesis of inhibitors and probes targeting endo-glycosidases.

More and more medicines are becoming available that target a tumour’s specific traits. The use of chemotherapy is continually undergoing improvement.

This thesis explores different avenues to develop insurmountable antagonists for CC Chemokine Receptors, such as CCR1, CCR2 and CCR5.

Both psoriasis and atheroslcerosis are diseases characterized by a chronic and systemic inflammatory profile with local lipid disturbances that alter the barrier function of the skin (psoriasis) and cause the development of atherosclerotic plaques (atherosclerosis).

PhD defence

Supervisor: Andrea Martella

‘If we don’t start talking about this, who else will?’ This is what Arjan Lankester, paediatrician/immunologist at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Professor of Paediatrics, thought when it seemed that various extremely effective gene therapies for rare diseases would no longer be available…

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…

During the course of drug discovery translational steps are made.

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

Our previous meta-analysis (Swart et al., 2019) had shown that feedback targeting text comprehension given when students perform a reading task positively influences learning from text. So far, differences in the effects of feedback were explained by design features, such as the timing and richness…

Drug-target binding kinetics determine the time course of the central event in pharmacotherapy: Drug-target interaction.

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.…

Vanessa Frodermann, a PhD student at the Biopharmaceutical department of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, has discovered that arteriosclerosis could be inhibited by cellular therapy. Arteriosclerosis is one of the leading causes of the development of cardiovascular disease. Her PhD defence…

Epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity (EMP) and tumor cell migration play an important role in cancer progression, and an improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying these concepts is essential for developing new targeted approaches.

Inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can severely impact both the physical and social aspect of a patient’s life. Aberrant inflammatory responses are thought to be a major causative factor in these disorders, but an abundance of different factors contribute to the development…

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the deadliest common cancer, with only 8% of patients surviving for five years. One reason for this poor outcome is that current chemotherapy treatments are highly toxic, often leaving patients too sick to receive treatment or forcing doctors to lower the dose…

On 22 January, Annemarie Madani-Abbing will defend her dissertation 'Art therapy and anxiety' regarding her research into the effectiveness of anthroposophic art therapy in treating anxiety in women. We asked her about her research and what it was like to combine a job outside academia with studying…

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

Source: ChemMedChem (2015)

This thesis describes the development of a variety of mannosylated conjugates. Antigen presenting cells bear mannoside recognizing receptors that actively transport antigen into the cell. This thesis exploits this feature for the development of improved vaccines.

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

American pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb will be building a new (CAR-T) cell therapy facility in the Oegstgeest part of the Leiden Bio Science Park. The company will manufacture and develop CAR T-cell therapy for patients with blood cancer (leukaemia), for example.

Chemical tools to monitor drug-target engagement of endogenously expressed protein kinases are highly desirable for preclinical target validation in drug discovery. Here, we describe a chemical genetics strategy to selectively study target engagement of endogenous kinases.

Biophysicist Alireza Mashaghi and his collaborators are taking up the fight against muscular dystrophy: genetic disorders that cause muscle weakness. They want to inhibit the clumping of proteins that results in toxic aggregates. For this, the team receives 550,000 euros from Health Holland. The team…

The Translational Immuno-Pharmacology group works on translating the efficacy of anti-infective therapy from preclinical (e.g. in vivo) to clinical, and is led by Rob van Wijk. Infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, are in constant need of new therapies that work better, faster, and with less risk…

Source: Org Biomol Chem, Volume 13, Issue 8, pp. 2407-22 (2015)

Skåne University Hospital, Lund University and Leiden University Medical Center will work together to expand their research, teaching and development relating to Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products. That is the essence of a Memorandum of Understanding signed at SciLifeLab near Stockholm on Wednesday…

In the research programme Drug Discovery & Safety, we are interested in the efficacy and safety of new drugs and novel means to decipher these aspects. Hence, we employ advanced imaging and high-throughput screening techniques next to computational approaches such as chem- and bioinformatics.

The focus of the Antiviral Pharmacology group led by Anne-Grete Märtson is optimizing antiviral therapy for different viral infections by conducting clinical trials and using innovative computational and dynamic laboratory methodologies.

Not taking into account the saturation of drug targets can lead to wrong conclusions about the duration of a drug's action. This is what former PhD candidate Wilbert de Witte writes together with the Leiden professors of pharmacology Meindert Danhof, Piet van der Graaf, and Liesbeth de Lange in Nature…

Developing a better treatment for patients with head and neck cancer, that is what Binanox, The 2022 iGEM Leiden team, want to achieve. They hope to raise at least 10,000 euros for this cause. Support their crowdfunding campaign today.

Kinase inhibitors are key therapeutic agents, particularly in oncology, yet their clinical efficacy is often hampered by off-target effects and limited understanding of their cellular target profiles.

Immune system defends our body against pathogens and cancerous cells, but excessive immunity can in turn lead to tissue damages and diseases. For example, scratching the surface of the eye ignites an immune response that aims at preventing infection but can also lead to edema, angiogenesis and eventually…