Welcome to Leiden University

As part of the Leiden study system we provide first-year bachelor’s students with good support and good academic guidance. This guidance is given by tutors and mentors from your faculty or study programme.

As part of the Leiden study system we provide first-year bachelor’s students with good support and good academic guidance. This guidance is given by tutors and mentors from your faculty or study programme.

As part of the Leiden study system we provide first-year bachelor’s students with good support and good academic guidance. This guidance is given by tutors and mentors from your faculty or study programme.

As part of the Leiden study system we provide first-year bachelor’s students with good support and good academic guidance. This guidance is given by tutors and mentors from your faculty or study programme.

As part of the Leiden study system we provide first-year bachelor’s students with good support and good academic guidance. This guidance is given by tutors and mentors from your faculty or study programme.

Education

Could we stop cancer cells by cutting off their energy supply? That’s what Dione Blok, a bachelor’s student in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences, aimed to find out during her thesis research. She investigated a compound that affects the tumour cells’ energy metabolism. ‘Hopefully, these insights will provide…

On 1 June 2022, Maarten Kunst, Professor of Criminology at Leiden Law School, gave a lecture on his research into the effects of the right to be heard on both the defendant and the victim. Victims have certain rights in the Dutch criminal process, including the right to be heard in criminal proceedings.…

How can we slow the progression of atherosclerosis? Researcher Amanda Foks believes the answer may be switching off ageing immune cells. This could lead to an entirely new treatment for heart attacks and strokes. She has been awarded an Established Investigator Dekker Grant by the Dutch Heart Founda…

In addition to cholesterol and high blood pressure as risk factors for atherosclerosis, we may need to address our own immune system to prevent a heart attack or stroke. Marie Depuydt revealed which cells exactly reside in the atherosclerotic plaque that narrows an artery. The presence of a diverse…

Zes onderzoekers zijn voor twee jaar aangesteld als themaleider voor de onderzoeksthema's van de faculteit Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen.

In the Netherlands, 1.55 million people suffer from cardiovascular diseases. Yet, acute cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke, often occur unexpectedly. That is because many people do not know they are at risk for such an event. Immunological researcher Amanda Foks and her colleagues…

How do you detect people at high risk of heart attacks and strokes? And how can we improve the treatment of atherosclerosis? These are the questions that keep LACDR researcher Marie Depuydt busy. She is investigating the immune cells that contribute to the worsening of atherosclerosis. ‘It's a challenging…

Packages of DNA strands containing silver, measuring just two or three nanometres in size. Leiden physicists Donny de Bruin and Dirk Bouwmeester create these packages, which can enter living cells on their own. They then activate the silver with light, causing the cells to break down. This could, in…

LUMC and Leiden University will start the new two-year online master's program in Transfusion Medicine and Cellular and Tissue Therapies from October 2023.

Before researchers can develop targeted drugs, they need to know exactly how a disease works. Biochemist Bert Beerkens created molecules that allow them to find out. He used caffeine as the basis for new molecules that enable research into certain receptor proteins on cells.

Nano-plastics cause malformations. Meiru Wang, researcher at the Institute of Biology Leiden, looked at the extreme effects polystyrene nano-particles could have, using chicken embryos as a model. Her results were quite alarming. Especially as nano-particles are everywhere. In the air, floating through…

How do cells repair their damaged DNA—and what happens when that process is hindered and cancer arises? Sarah Moser has taken a closer look during her PhD, uncovering surprising insights that could help improve future cancer treatments.

Koen Keijzer combined three mathematical models into one unified system capable of making meaningful predictions about how cells form blood vessels. This helps biologists studying the chaotic, leaky blood vessels found in and around tumours.

Since its discovery thirty years ago, it remained a mystery: how does the body’s own marijuana move between nerve cells in the brain? Mario van der Stelt and his research group have now uncovered the answer. This insight could aid the development of new treatments for pain and neurological disorders…

In order to stop a whole range of diseases or disorders at their source, you would have to be able to switch certain genes on or off. Sebastian Pomplun wants to develop substances that can do this very precisely. For example, he wants to disrupt cancer processes and make cells produce an important missing…

In brain diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, proteins clump together to form fibres. ‘Chaperone proteins’ unravel those fibres, but in the test tube biochemist Anne Wentink saw that this can also cause new problems. She is going to find out what happens inside cells to determine what a drug…

How has evolution shaped our curiosity? And how does that curiosity ensure that we now have the technological ability to discover whether we are alone in the universe? This was all covered during the celebration of Leiden University’s 449th Dies Natalis.

A European team of astronomers has discovered the largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way. It is more than thirty times as massive as our sun and is located in the constellation of Aquila, about two thousand light-years from Earth. The astronomers stumbled upon the black hole by chance while preparing…

In a new piece for The Conversation UK, Michiel van Elk examines whether mystical experiences are essential to psychedelic therapy. 'If the field is to mature, it may need to move beyond the assumption that transcendence is the secret ingredient.'

How do organs work in the body, and how can we create mini-organs to study diseases and test new medicines? That’s the idea behind organ-on-a-chip technology. During his PhD, Flavio Bonanini worked on developing the best possible mini-livers. ‘Make them as simple as possible, and as complex as neede…

Modified viruses can both kill cancer cells and activate the immune system. This is what an LUMC team discovered while researching a new prostate cancer therapy.

Three fundamental research projects at Leiden in physics, chemistry and medical science have received funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). They involve research on magnetic fields in the universe, the role of myeloid cells in cancer immunotherapy and the evolution of ancient proteins.

The winner of the 2022 Spring edition of the NWO Venture Challenge was announced during the Dutch Biotech Event. The innovative startup Iprotics has developed specific proteasome inhibitors that potentially treat multiple myeloma (MM) without the side-effects known from traditional proteasome inhibi…

Is it a coincidence that three chemists from the same department have each independently received a ZonMw grant? 'No,' the researchers agree in unison. 'The role of chemistry in medical biology is becoming increasingly important, and we’ve worked hard to make this happen.'

Mini organs-on-chips allow us to study how diseases develop and how drugs work. Although the technology is not new, it is becoming increasingly advanced. PhD candidate Bart Kramer hopes it will eliminate animal testing in the future.

One used 3D cell models to study colorectal cancer, while the other used machine learning for more efficient blood donation. For these achievements, Marieke Vinkenoog and Simon Christian Hansmann were awarded the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award on Tuesday 2 September.

Gijs Zebregts had just graduated from International Studies when he was stricken with acute leukaemia. A stem cell donor brought relief. Now he is going to cycle from Florence to Rotterdam to raise money and awareness for the donor bank.