The CIGR comprises research groups from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) and the Leiden Institue of Physics (LION).

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

Indira Nederpelt was elected as the winner of the Young Investigator Award for best oral presentation titled ‘’Kinetic characterization of clinically used GnRH peptide agonists’’.

PhD defence

PhD defence

Cytotoxic T-cells (CTLs) are involved in the clearance of viruses and killing of tumor cells.

The aim of this research area is to be able to predict human drug response on the basis of mathematical models that are developed using preclinical experiments and prior knowledge.

Biological polymers, including proteins and the genome, undergo folding processes crucial for their proper functioning. Even slight changes in the folding structure of these biopolymers can have significant implications, leading to the development of various pathological conditions, such as neurodegenerative…

We study cell-fate decision-making using embryonic stem cells as a model system. Stem cells integrate a large number of cues to direct their development into a great variety of cell types.

Life Sciences Artificial Intelligence Data Science

Festival

An essential protein that regulates our heart beat turns out to be important for cancer cells as well. The discovery might open novel treatment strategies for fighting metastasis. Publication in Science Signaling on April 4th.

PhD defence

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.

On 16 May 2022, Professor Michel Wouters from the Department of Biomedical Data Sciences at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), will deliver his inaugural lecture titled ‘Quality of Cancer Care: why the real world matters’. Wouters will use the opportunity to describe how quality registries…

The Phantom of the Ego is the first comparative study that shows how the modernist account of the unconscious anticipates contemporary discoveries about the importance of mimesis in the formation of subjectivity.

This book covers the story of Greece and its central role in our understanding of European civilization, from the Palaeolithic era (400,000 BP) to the early modern period (1950 AD).

The zebrafish is a promising vertebrate model organism in early drug discovery and development.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson

Promotores: A.P. IJzerman, H.W.T. van Vlijmen

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated host response to infection, it is associated with significant morbidity, mortality, and with a high financial burden on global healthcare systems. Bacterial infections are the primary cause of sepsis, but the growing prevalence of antimicrobial…

Adenosine is an endogenous ligand which exerts its action by activating adenosine receptors (ARs), while its circulating levels are controlled via a variety of mechanism and proteins, amongst others the equilibrative nucleoside transporters (ENTs).

Key publications of the Computational Drug Discovery group

Find out how to apply for Drug Discovery and Safety at Leiden University by following our step-by-step guide. NOTE: This specialisation will be integrated into the new specialisation ‘’Research in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences’’ as of September 2025.

At Molecular Physiology we teach the following courses within the Leiden Institute of Chemistry's Chemistry and Life Science and Technology programmes.

Do you have questions about the Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences master’s programme or the specialisation Drug Discovery and Safety? Please contact us.

The Graduate School of Science starts 2024 with a new Dean. The Faculty Council appointed Erik Danen for the coming four years. He succeeds Eric Eliel, who has held the position since May 2020.

Can drugs that target host signaling pathways be used to eradicate antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

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

Real-life processes are characterized by dynamics involving time. Examples are walking, sleeping, disease progress in medical treatment, and events in a workflow.

Three speakers, three fascinating science stories and a well-filled lecture hall. The Niko Tinbergen Lecture had a successful restart on 10 December 2019.

Lecture, Workshop

Jasper de Bruin, Guus Besuijen, Hans Siemons & Jeroen van Zoolingen (2012). De romeinse nederzetting bij het tegenwoordige Goedereede heeft waarschijnlijk een belangrijke functie gehad in de overslag en distributie van diverse goederen, waaronder keramiek en voedingsgewassen. De opgraving van deze nederzetting…

Terms used by literary critics in characterizing the style of novels are often impressionistic (‘baroque’, ‘austere’, ‘vivid’, ‘cerebral’ etc.). Foundations for such evaluations are usually not provided. A scientific way of studying and explaining style is lacking in present day Dutch Studies. Suzanne…

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Schaye, Co-promotor: Marcello Cacciato

On 22 June, Anneke Koning defended the thesis 'Return to sender: a multi-method study of guardianship against transnational sexual exploitation of children'. The doctoral research was supervised by Joanne van der Leun, Masja van Meeteren and Johan van Wilsem.

For people who are seriously ill, an empathetic doctor can make a world of difference. Psychologist Janine Westendorp examined helpful and harmful communication in the consulting room. ‘It’s very important to stress that you are always there supporting the person, even if there’s no cure.’

Update : March 2020 A.J. Mills

On Wednesday the 4th of September, Queen Máxima opened the renovated tropical greenhouse complex of the Leiden Hortus Botanicus. At the occasion Máxima met with IBL-PhD student Mahin Ghorbani from Iran and talked with her about her work on drug discovery from Iranian medicinal plants using zebrafish…

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

Bones contain information about people’s lives such as where they came from, their age at death and which diseases they suffered from. Researchers can deduce a lot from them about a person’s life and about human evolution. This generates leads that could help solve present-day problems, such as how…

The majority of scientists, from archaeologists through to zoologists, collect huge volumes of data. Their massive databases contain large amounts of information which is difficult for humans to filter. With a solid grounding in statistics, we can develop algorithms for analysing and identifying patterns…

In this research group, led by Dr. Joost Beltman, the aim is to employ mathematical and computational dynamical modelling approaches in order to quantitatively and mechanistically understand the dynamical behaviour and regulation of intracellular networks of genes, proteins and metabolites as well as…

A consortium of research groups, including that of LACDR professor Erik Danen, will use an NWO Perspective grant of nearly five million euros to build a universal standard for organ-on-chip models. They aim to stimulate the application of these chips in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry. Danen…

The focus of this programme is the inter-community social relationships and transformations of island networks in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide.

In this thesis it is posed that the central object of preference discovery is a co-creative process in which the Other can be represented by a machine. It explores efficient methods to enhance introverted intuition using extraverted intuition's communication lines.

Grants awarded to molecular physiology research