Key research articles, reviews and books of the Chromatin group.

The doors of the new Gorlaeus Building are officially open! With an additional lab wing, new lecture halls and offices, a library, a brasserie, and spaces for student associations, the building offers a vibrant and inspiring environment for research, study, and social interaction. Explore on your…

Current research at the Skin Barrier and Vaccination group.

The Dick Stufkens Prize 2025 for best PhD thesis of the Holland Research School of Molecular Chemistry (HRSMC) has been awarded to Begüm Demirkurt for her thesis “Mechanical Contact Imaging using Fluorescence Techniques”. Demirkurt, who obtained her doctorate from the University of Amsterdam last March,…

On Monday 21 September Annemarie Meijer, Professor of Immunobiology, presented her inaugural lecture on immunobiology and infectious disease.

The winner of the Paul & Tatiana Ehrenfest physics thesis prize 2020 is Koen Bastiaans. He carried out his PhD research in the group of Milan Allan and defended his thesis in December 2019 cum laude at Leiden University.

Organ-on-chip technology is used in drug research and customized treatments for patients. Research Institutes and industry join forces within the Institute for human Organ and Disease Model Technologies (hDMT) that was officially launched on May 18. Combining facilities, people and expertise will allow…

The coronavirus has the world in its grip. Finding a cure has never been more important. Unfortunately, the development of new drugs for treatment of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus and development of a vaccine are complex, lengthy, and above all costly processes. With the help of computer…

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded chemist Dr Alexander Kros a Starting Independent Researcher Grant of 1.4 million euro. He will be using the grant to study how molecules penetrate the natural barrier of a cell membrane. If his research is successful, it will in time bring about a revolution…

Leiden Physicists have developed a new technique to visualize electrical conductance in sheet-like nano materials. It shows great promise for devices based on a new family of materials—the ‘Van der Waals materials’. The physicists, who won the 2015 Dutch Vacuum Society prize for their work, present…

Confetti, stilt walkers and the new Einstein Fountain. On Monday, 2 September, the Gorlaeus Building of the Faculty of Science was festively opened. Together with Constantijn van Oranje, our students cut the ribbon. Dean Jasper Knoester: ‘The building is ready, now it is up to our students and researchers…

On Friday 30 November 2018 more than 70 students became acquainted with the large range of companies that Leiden Bio Science Park has to offer. In addition to the companies with eye-catching façade names along the cycling route to the faculty, like CHDR, BaseClear and Astellas, there is much more to…

From 22 to 24 October, researchers of the MARBLES-project informed museum visitors about microbes: bacteria and fungi that live all around us. The event was organised around the Micro-day of Leiden, which is this year’s EU City of Science.

As of 1 September, Jeroen van Zon started as professor by special appointment in Quantitative Developmental Biology at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). Van Zon is also group leader of Quantitative Developmental Biology at the physics research institute AMOLF. Three questions about his new role…

Mazène Hochane and Xueying Fan have won the fourth annual LION Image Award. They created a detailed colour image of a human kidney in development.

Leiden University has appointed John van Noort as Professor in Biophysics. He studies the way in which our DNA is folded and read out.

We use zebrafish as a model organism to study human development and disease as well as animal welfare and environmental impact.

He presented his PhD research entitled “Kick-starting drug development; translational systems pharmacology using innovative zebrafish experiments and advanced computational modelling”. During his presentation, Rob highlighted the advancements he made in using zebrafish as model in system pharmacolog…

The image of the Leiden microboat traveled all over the world, from the BBC up to Arab shipping blogs. But Daniela Kraft's research group has quite a few more different 3D printed microswimmers up their sleeves. Kraft receives a Vidi research grant for research into these variously shaped active par…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has granted four grants to Leiden humanities scholars. They get to spend this money on research on a topic of their choice, without thematic preconditions.

Why do some bacteria lose their protective cell wall under the influence of stress? Microbiologist Dennis Claessen of the Institute of Biology Leiden receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to investigate this paradoxical feature.

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…

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2019, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

Provenance and distribution of raw materials

The "Van Marum Colloquia" are a collaborative lecture series between the LION and LIC institutes, focusing on fundamental and applied surface science.

How can you ensure that more experimental drugs reach the finish line? At the moment, only one in twenty cancer drugs that are tested on humans makes it to the market. This is an enormous loss for patients and society. With a grant from the National Growth Fund, Oncode-PACT aims to efficiently select…

Eleven Leiden researchers have been awarded an 800,000 euro Vidi grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This will enable them to develop their own innovative line of research and start their own research group.

Recently, NWO has decided to grant two interdisciplinary research proposals for national and international consortia submitted by researchers from the Institute of Biology Leiden. One of the proposals is led by Prof. dr. Ariane Briegel, the other one by dr. Remko Offringa.

Biologists today have to be able to work with big data. Data analysis skills should be taught from the start of the degree programme, or - even better - in secondary school. This is the message of Vera van Noort, new Professor of Computational Biology. Inaugural lecture 22 January.

Physicists Lucia Bossoni and Martina Huber have been awarded an NWA Ideeëngenerator-grant for research into iron nanoparticles in the brain. These nanoparticles may be linked to air pollution and Alzheimer's disease.

Manufacturers produce high-end technology mostly top-down with large machinery, but small particles are able to build structures by themselves from the bottom up. A major challenge is that these particles easily clump together. Leiden physicist Daniela Kraft has developed a method to use this phenomenon…

The bacterium Vibrio cholerae is a serious threat to our health because it is the causative agent of cholera. Worldwide, over a billion people per year are at risk of cholera infection. New strains of V. cholerae are resistant to the multiple drugs used to treat cholera, meaning that new types of drugs…

Neanderthals in cold regions probably ate a lot more vegetable food than was previously thought. This is what archaeologist Robert Power has discovered based on new research on ancient Neanderthal dental plaque. PhD defence 1 November.

Mysterious protein fibers show up in the brain cells of people suffering from Alzheimer’s' disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Leiden physicist Louise Jawerth has been awarded a Vidi grant to find out how these fibers form in the first place.

PhD student Wen Yang discovered how certain cell receptors in E. coli bacteria signal 'smells'. With the use of ice-cold electron microscopy microbiologists from Leiden gain more insight into how bacteria respond to their environment. Publication in mBio.

In the week of 22 May, a delegation of the Faculty of Science visited Indonesia to strengthen the cooperation with the Universitas Gadjah Mada, the Universitas Indonesia and the Kebun Raja (botanical garden) in Bogor. Furthermore, the delegation visited the faculty of Pharmacy of the Institut Teknologi…

As of 1 June, Leiden University has appointed Sense Jan van der Molen as Professor Physics of Condensed matter. He investigates the unique electronic properties that arise when atomic thin layers are stacked on top of each other into new materials.

Nanodiamonds and charcoal in Dutch soil provide no evidence for the alleged impact of a meteorite at the end of the last Ice Age. This is the conclusion of a research done by Utrecht University in collaboration with Leiden University and the University of Groningen.

A certain type of oil droplets changes shape when cooled and shrunk: from spherical through icosahedral to flat hexagonal. Two competing theories couldn't fully explain this, but now, a Physical Review Letter by Ireth García-Aguilar and Luca Giomi solves the mystery.

‘Working in Leiden is a dream come true.’ Ákos Kovács studied in his birth country Hungary and worked in Germany, Denmark and Groningen. As professor of Microbiome Ecology at IBL, he immediately started working together with his new colleagues to make discoveries about the versatile bacterial species…

Chinese universities have big ambitions to be among the leading international higher education institutions. What does this mean in terms of opportunities for researchers at the universities of Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam? Staff at the universities recently discussed the issue.

Research into depression in children, Leiden alumni in the Dutch House of Representatives and an exceptional achievement by one of our students: what do this topics have in common? They are among our most read stories of 2021.

The €6.24 million EU-funded research project QSPainRelief has kicked off. The project aims to help patients suffering from chronic pain with novel, personalised combinational treatments and is coordinated by Elizabeth de Lange from the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research.

With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery…

Sugar excipients, needed to stabilize medicines, can be unsafe for patients due to an impurity discovered recently by Daniel Weinbuch. ‘The biopharmaceutical industry should now consider new excipient quality criteria for safer drug development,’ he says. PhD defence on 13 December.

The European Commission has officially established Euro-BioImaging – which provides life scientists with open access to a broad range of technologies and resources in biological and biomedical imaging – as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). The Cell Observatory in Leiden is part of…

On 27 February, 2019, Kampala International University (KIU) was the venue of the conference ‘Digital Health and Development in Data Science in Uganda’. Professor Mirjam van Reisen from the Leiden Centre of Data Science was one of the main speakers.

Making all those things we normally cannot see visible is the challenge that fascinates Fons Verbeek, Leiden's new Professor of Computational Bio-Imaging. Contributions from chemistry, optics and in particular computational sciences to making and processing these images give greater insight into the…

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