The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) is committed to improving healthcare and the health of individuals. The LUMC staff put this mission into practice on a daily basis with their leading research, cutting-edge teaching and optimal, innovative healthcare.

By carrying out fundamental research and providing excellent education, universities become a breeding ground for innovation and entrepreneurship.

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.

Strengthening a cancer patient's own immune system so that the body itself can better destroy cancer cells. This is at the heart of immunotherapy, the most promising progress in cancer treatment in recent years. In order to drive this development further, the Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Science with the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

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In this thesis, the researcher developed a nanosystem based on the metallophilic Interaction between cyclometalated complexes.

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 tantalizing concept that has emerged in our recent research is binding kinetics. An important parameter is residence time (RT), a direct reflection of how long a drug stays bound to its target. This parameter is of crucial importance, because drug action lasts only as long as the receptor-ligand complex…

Supervisor: Andrea Martella

Where exactly on the surface of a catalyst do the chemical reactions occur? Until now, it has always been a challenge to identify the exact locations of these ‘active sites’. In a new article in Nature, Leiden chemists helped their international colleagues reveal new insights into this issue. Their…

Promotor: E. Bouwman, Co-promotor: S. Bonnet

In prehistoric times there was a huge wave of migration, from the steppes in Russia and Ukraine to West Europe. The newcomers’ genes began to dominate. Archaeology research in Leiden into burial mounds in the Veluwe and Utrechtse Heuvelrug areas of the Netherlands yielded this spectacular conclusion.…

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Development & Disease research theme include the mechanisms and evolution of embryonic development, the development of cognitive mechanisms, and animal models for understanding mechanisms of human disease.

Bioactive Molecules is one of the four research themes of the Institute of Biology Leiden.

The Molecular Physiology group collaborates with both international public-private and academic institutions.

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.

Gerard van Westen and his group, together with pharmaceutical company Galapagos, start on developing software that invents new effective molecules. They will receive an NWO LIFT grant of 280,000 euros, of which 63,000 euros will come from Galapagos. The company will also bring its expertise in biology,…

PhD candidate Mengxu Zhang (Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy) published a comprehensive and important review on “The potential impact of CYP and UGT drug-metabolizing enzymes on brain target site drug exposure” in Drug Metabolism Reviews.

It was her original Salterio from 1725, built by Michele Barbi, which Franziska Fleischanderl could coincidentally acquire in 2014 that ignited her passion for this special string instrument. Before, she was focussed on contemporary music with modern Hackbrett.

Coordination chemistry is the chemistry of metal atoms

Can we find and commercialise new treatments for chronic disease that affect our ageing population? And how can we customise this research and development programme to the small but highly-developed Netherlands research economy?

LIACS organizes different lectures and colloquia, like the Florence Nightingale Colloquium, LCN2 Seminars, the Ada Lovelace Distinguished Lecture Series and the OTICS Colloquium.

Key publications of the Predictive Pharmacology group.

On Friday evening 17 September, Leiden astronomer Joe Callingham can be seen in a new series on Discovery channel. Killers of the Cosmos is about different deadly dangers lurking in the depths of space. Asteroids, cosmic debris, electromagnetic weapons… The show takes a film-noir approach to these threats,…

The predication of the effect (efficiency and toxicity) of a drug in a patient is very important in (i) clinical decision support and (ii) the development of novel drug treatments. We apply our technology and methods to find biomarkers for key disease pathways and toxicity in clinical studies and in…

How can you use robots and automatic recognition of microscopic images to test the effect of drugs exceptionally quickly?

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…

Former masterstudent Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences Maddalena Centanni will be awarded the 2020 Arenberg Coimbra Prize for Erasmus Students. Centanni spent her six month Erasmus exchange at Uppsala Universiy in Sweden where she looked for ways to improve anti-cancer drug dosing.

Promotor: B. van de Water

Can we bring novel treatment options to the clinic for UM patients with liver metastases?

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.

Designing and synthesizing high-affinity ligands for a given drug target have always been among the more important challenges in the drug discovery process.

Many students receive their first job offer during or right after their Business Studies internship. After graduating you can also aim for a career in Bio-Pharmaceutical research.

In the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) we strive to improve health care and the health of people.

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

This project aims to assess the risk of spread of antimicrobial resistance genes in the environment derived from currently used synthetic biology approaches in the field of drug discovery.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.P. van Wezel

In this thesis, we have studied the potential of the zebrafish larval model in studying the ECS, as a complementary model to the existing rodent models.

Chemical tools to monitor drug-target engagement of endogenously expressed protein kinases are highly desirable for preclinical target validation in drug discovery. Here, we describe a chemical genetics strategy to selectively study target engagement of endogenous kinases.

Source: J Med Chem, Volume 57, Issue 8, pp. 3213-22 (2014)

Drug use during pregnancy seems like a choice without any consequences. However, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) has decided to prosecute a mother for using alcohol and drugs during her pregnancy. Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Child Law, tells current affairs programme ‘Nieuwsuur’ that she…

If doctors could better estimate a patient's chances of survival, this would help in choosing a specific treatment. It would be particularly beneficial for the rare and malignant Ewing sarcoma, which mainly affects children and adolescents. Mathematics professor Marta Fiocco has been awarded a substantial…

Leiden Professor of Translational Rheumatology Hans Ulrich Scherer has one foot in the clinic, where he helps patients, and the other in the lab, where he supervises researchers. He bridges these two worlds in his hunt for autoimmune rheumatic diseases.

The IBL represents the core of modern biological research at Leiden and we interact closely with the other life science Partner Institutes in the faculty:

Through his project we will unravel the global regulatory networks that control gene expression in Streptomyces bacteria and allow them to properly respond to major changes in the environment; we will then harness this knowledge to activate and identify novel antibiotics

Marieke Liem, professor at ISGA, discusses how the number of drug-related murders has not decreased in the last years

In a recent article published on PLOS, Drs. Briana Pobiner and Ryan McRae of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History discuss the top 13 discoveries in human evolution in 2023.