Promotores: B. van de Water; P. Hogendoorn; J. Bovée Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

Fungal infections pose a significant threat to individuals with compromised immune systems and despite advancements in diagnosis and treatment, they continue to jeopardize patient’s health.

After graduation you have a lot of opportunities: academics are highly sought after in Dutch secondary education or mbo teaching. You can also aim for a management position or work as a researcher within the field of Life Sciences.

To improve treatment of breast cancer patients it is important to understand all stages of breast cancer from initiation to in situ disease and progression to invasive disease. In this thesis we use intraductal injections of patient derived tissue to model ductal carcinoma in situ and invasive breast…

In the Phenomix Medical Delta Field Lab, which was officially opened on Thursday 9 July, scientists, healthcare institutions and businesses work together to develop innovative applications in the field of metabolomics. This research field makes it possible to determine which drugs will be effective…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Science with University of California.

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

Leiden researcher Anne-Grete Märtson brought together a large number of studies to better understand antibiotic dosing in patients with obesity. The publication in a renowned medical journal has already garnered much positive reactions, Märtson says. ‘It’s high time researchers started sharing more…

Two consortia led by Leiden researchers have been awarded over one million euros by the Dutch Research Council and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport to find solutions to antimicrobial resistance.

The Chemical Probe Facility is part of the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development (LED3) center. Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) is one of the pillars of chemical biology. ABPP determines the activity of entire protein families in living cells and tissues under physiological conditions, such…

The master’s programme of Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences at Leiden University examines the research area of bio-pharmaceutical sciences and drug research. It offers seven specialisations ranging from BioTherapeutics to Industrial Pharmacy.

A Dutch consortium has received €6.7 million to accelerate the development of nanomedicines together with patients. Researchers from Leiden University play a key role in the project.

Accurate prediction of the unbound drug concentration-time profile at the CNS target site is crucial for the assessment of the right drug concentration-effect relationship. PBPK models have supported the PK prediction of the CNS target sites and the translation of PK data between species and between…

Steffen Brünle's group investigates G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). These essential membrane proteins are prime targets for therapeutic drug development in disease and cancer treatment.

The Novel chemical modalities research group is headed by Assistant Professor Sebastian Pomplun. Sebastian started at the division of Medicinal Chemistry within the LACDR in September 2021. His lab develops technologies for the discovery of novel chemical modalities that can address challenging drug…

kiem grant: Investigating the anti-inflammatory potential of the PRG4 protein in preventing and alleviating rheumatoid arthritis

While bioinformatics methods deal with the analysis of sequence information (be it proteins or DNA), the field of cheminformatics is concerned with the analysis of small-molecule datasets.

Promotor: B. vd Water, T. Schmidt, Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

The discovery of new medicines is a tedious and lengthy process. On average, over 10,000 molecules need to be studied for one to become a drug and reach the patient. Part of that process are the very costly clinical trials in humans, and candidate drugs often fail due to side effects or lack of efficacy.…

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.

PhD defence

Supervisor: Xue Yang

We aim to gain a better understanding of the natural disease progression of ALS in order to improve clinical trial design and analysis and to support drug discovery and clinical development of new drugs.

In April, the X-omics initiative was granted 17 million euros from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research. The subsidy is part of the National Roadmap for large-scale scientific infrastructure, intended to build or renew large-scale research facilities. What new insights will this investment…

Professor Thomas Hankemeier and his international research team HYPERMARKER have received a 10m-euro grant from Horizon Europe and UK Research and Innovation.

Atherosclerosis is a progressive disease resulting in the formation of an arterial plaque. Despite lipid lowering, recurrent cardiovascular events remain a risk. While atherosclerosis is primarily lipid-driven, the immune system plays a critical role in the pathophysiology.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. Metastasis, the process by which cancer cells spread to other parts of the body, makes treatments less effective. It is important to unravel the mechanism of metastasis.

Inactivating mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes predispose to several types of cancer.

Source: Eur J Med Chem, Volume 101, pp. 681-91 (2015)

Particles are omnipresent in biopharmaceutical products. In protein-based therapeutics such particles are generally associated with impurities, either derived from the drug product itself (e.g. protein aggregates), or from extrinsic contaminations (e.g. cellulose fibers).

The division of BioTherapeutics consists of the former divisions Biopharmaceutics and Drug Delivery Technology.

Growth and development affect the metabolism of drugs administered to neonates, infants, and children.

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water, Co-promotores: L.T.M. van der Ven, A.S. Kienhuis

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water, Co-promotores: J.W. van der Laan, C.L.E. Siezen

Promotor: B. van de Water, Co-Promotores: J.H.N. Meerman, F.J. Verbeek

Our research aims to develop drugs that boost the host immune response to better defend us against mycobacteria.

Liposomes hold great promise for peptide-based personalized cancer vaccination, especially when administered intradermally. However, current liposome preparation methods are very time consuming (resulting in long development times per formulation), whereas personalized cancer vaccination requires very…

Source: Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Volume 134, pp. S44-S44 (2014) ISBN: 0022-202X

The outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum (SC), is responsible for the skin barrier function, protecting the body from pathogens, chemicals and other unwanted substances from the external environment. The SC lipid matrix provides the only continuous pathway through the SC and is considered…

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the pathogen causing tuberculosis (TB), is the leader among all pathogens responsible for the most human deaths today and it is considered as one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. There is an increasing occurrence of multidrug-resistant and even totally drug-resistant…

Source: The AAPS journal, Volume 16, Issue 4, pp. 681-684 (2014)

Source: British Journal of Dermatology, Volume 170, Number 6, pp. E18-E19 (2014) ISBN:0007-0963

Bispecific antibodies with one Fab arm binding to effector cells, such as T-cells and NK-cells, while the other Fab arm recognizing a tumor associated antigen (TAA) can be used to redirect these effector cells for tumor specific killing. Using bispecific antibodies to treat hematological cancers is…

Source: Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Volume 135, pp. S59-S59 (2015)

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease which is spreaded through the air. It is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and it led 1.7 million people to death in 2016. This mortarlity rate is concentrated in developing countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, and South Africa. These numbers make…

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global health problem caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). In 2015, there were estimated to be 10.4 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths ascribed to TB, making it one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. Unfortunately, the only current registered…

A combination of two potential drugs gives hope of a 'super blockage' of an over-active immune system, Leiden researchers report in Nature. The breakthrough came from the crystallisation of a membrane protein.

Currently, several successful vaccines are available. However, for pathogens with a highly variable genetic composition, and for which serum IgG antibodies are not a useful correlate of protection, effective vaccines are yet to be developed.

Drug development is a time- and resource-consuming process that starts with the discovery and validation of a (protein) target that contributes to pathogenesis or disease progression.

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