How do classroom demonstration experiments help students learn chemical reasoning? Marie-Jetta den Otter, PhD student at ICLON, researched this. She defends her thesis on 6 December.

Tackling key challenges of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry to aid drug discovery is one of the focus areas of Leiden University. To this end, the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development network (LED3) was established by the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Institute of Biology Leiden…

The theme of our 450th anniversary, and of this Dies Natalis, is Ahead of the Times. We have, after all, been directing our gaze to the future for centuries now.

What contributes to the successes and failures of governance networks in small to medium-sized Western European host cities in attracting International Organizations?

Anionic particles play an important role in biological systems where they fulfil many essential functions for cells.

In January 2014, the research project The Promise of Organization hosted a fruitful three-day conference:

A common assumption in chemistry is that the coordination number of a catalyst's surface determines the reactivity of the reaction it catalyses. Strikingly, Leiden chemists have now proven that this is not true for nature’s most simple chemical reaction: the dissociation of hydrogen. The researchers…

Researchers of the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry have made an important discovery about the commonly used anti-cancer drug doxorubicin. They have found a way to reduce its side effects without sacrificing the effectiveness of the medication. This is encouraging…

Quantum hardware comes with a different computing paradigm and new ways to tackle applications. Much effort has to be put into understanding how to leverage this technology to give real-world advantages in areas of interest for industries such as combinatorial optimization or machine learning.

Synthesis and application of chemical biology tools to study immunomodulatory signaling lipids.

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.

The cellular metabolism of immune cells constitutes an important part of their proper function and activation. Using T cells as an example, this phenomenon is highlighted by the metabolic reprogramming that occurs in these cells upon activation.

Students searched for a student project about internalization and the effects of nanomaterials in freshwater organisms. Open to BSc and MSc students and any timeframe.

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

The electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is an essential half-reaction for the utilization of hydrogen as a sustainable fuel, via the conversion of hydrogen to electrons and protons facilitated by the ORR. In the most common fuel cells, the ORR is requires high loadings of non-abundant platinum…

The organ in the Academy Building is 25 years old. University organist Jan Verschuren and tuner Bert Crama talk about the long history of university organs, improvising with short cortèges and their love for this organ.

PhD candidate Dennis Wander searches for the best of both worlds. That is to say: a cancer drug that is effective and also has minimal side effects. To this end, he makes new molecules inspired by two existing medicines. And not without result: ‘We have created a new variant that is very promising.’…

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)…

Overkleeft

Marc Koper, Professor of Catalysis and surface chemistry, has been awarded the EuChemS Gold Medal 2026. The prize is awarded every two years and recognises outstanding achievements in the field of chemistry in Europe.

LED3 is the combined effort of four excellent institutes of Leiden University. Through joined hands, we are able to give rise to a more effective early drug discovery pipeline. Let us briefly introduce the institutes.

In the last decade, the redox interconversion between metal thiolate and disulfide compounds has been extensively investigated for copper, but not for other transition metal ions.

Promotor: H.S. Overkleeft, Co-Promotor: B.I. Florea

Former Chemistry PhD student Tiddo Mooibroek is one of the 25 nominees for the title New Scientist Science Talent 2017. Nobel prize winner Ben Feringa will announce the winner at the New Scientist Live: Nobelprijs event on June 22, after a rating of the candidates by a jury and a public vote.

On March 27th, 2015 the biannual Dutch Medicinal Chemistry Prize for the best Dutch Ph.D. thesis in the field was awarded to Dr. Dong Guo, a current postdoc researcher in our lab, by the Section of Medicinal Chemistry of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society.

Quantum computing is an emerging technology, which holds the potential to simulate complex quantum systems beyond the reach of classical numerical methods.Despite recent formidable advancements in quantum hardware, constructing a quantum computer capable of performing useful calculations remains challenging.In…

Leiden based chemistry student and chess grandmaster proposes molecular system for development of artificial leaf

The European Council and the European Commission have a similar role in agenda setting. Both place issues on the EU agenda. However, these institutions have distinct designs. They have different political attributes (the European Council has considerably more political authority) and information-processing…

For the third consecutive year, LACDR organized the international symposium on topology, Circuit Topology III, on November 29, 2023. The event aimed to bring together experts from diverse fields, including mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, and biomedical sciences, to discuss cutting-edge…

A conference organized by Niels Blokker, professor of International Institutional Law and Ramses Wessel (RUG) to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the International Organizations Law Review.

MHC class I and MHC class II molecules present peptides to the immune system to drive proper T cell responses. Pharmacological modulation of T-cell responses can offer treatment options for a range of immune-related diseases.

Gerard van Westen has been appointed full Professor or Artificial Intelligence and Medicinal Chemistry. This chair has been jointly created by the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) as part of SAILS, the university stimulus program in Artificial…

In photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT), a biologically active compound is caged by a light-cleavable protecting group.

Our educational team has been awarded an ICTO-grant of €12000 for the LACDR for flipping the Biochemistry 2 classroom.

Twenty years from now, the world population is estimated to be around 8.7 billion people, compared to the current 7.3 billion. In combination with the improvements in living standards and the corresponding growth in consumption, this will result in an enormous increase in the demand for food, consumables,…

The main goal of the research described in this thesis was the development of new photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT) ruthenium(II) complexes bearing a non-toxic photolabile ligand.

This thesis introduces the concept of

In this thesis, we consider various (electro)chemical phenomena at surfaces and nanoparticles and their underlying atomistic processes, which we studied using first-principles methods such as density functional theory.

This thesis advance our understanding and the application of molecular catalysts relevant to the reduction of oxygen as well as reduction of nitrite.

The thesis describes the development, synthesis and biological evaluation of several proteasome inhibitor designs. Mainly, this work focusses on designing proteasome inhibitors that selectively inhibit the immunoproteasome, while leaving the constitutive proteasome mostly, if not completely, untouch…

Promotor: H.S. Overkleeft, Co-promotor: M. van der Stelt