LUMC researchers are looking for factors that point to illness at an early stage.

LUMC researchers are looking for factors that point to illness at an early stage.

Focus in skin research

Professor by Special Appointment of Clinical Neuropharmacology Geert Jan Groeneveld will deliver his inaugural lecture entitled ‘The importance of the biomarker’ on 11 March 2022. According to him, new genetic knowledge will revolutionise drug research.

Promotor: J. Kuiper

Promotor: H.J.M. de Groot, Co-Promotor: A. Alia

Supervisor: Maarten Doornbos

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. The most important risk factor for developing this disease is high cholesterol levels in the blood.

The Minor Computational Approaches to Disease, Signaling and Drug Targets (CADSDT) is focused on fundamental scientific research required for discovery of new drug targets and development of new drugs.

To explore the potential of marine microorganisms as producers of novel antimicrobial agents and as bioprotectants in aqua- and agriculture, using an integrative, ecology-based strategy for bioprospecting.

A main goal of MSBB research is to address the major bottle-necks in combatting viral diseases: the lack of experimental models that are representative of human pathology and are cost effective and versatile. Viral diseases such as those that cause viral hemorrhagic syndromes or severe acute respiratory…

Accelerating the diagnosis and personalising the management of inherited metabolic diseases.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper

How are the epidermal lipid pathways involved in health and disease.

Promotor: J. van der Greef, T. Hankemeier; Co-promotor: H.A. van Wietmarschen

Chronic inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis affect both the physical and psychological well-being of millions of patients, leading to persistent symptoms like itchiness and sleeplessness. These conditions often result in decreased productivity and quality of life overall,…

In what way can new tools and techniques be used to develop drug candidates for the treatment of neurological disorders?

In this thesis, we describe the potential of cell mechanical phenotyping for immune cell characterization, diagnosis, drug testing, as well as treatment of disease.

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.

Psychologist Bernadet Klaassens initiated a large fMRI study on the effect of drugs on brain networks in aging and Alzheimer's disease. It generated a unique data set and insight into a new method to develop drugs for patients with Alzheimer's.

In this thesis, two potential therapeutic targets for diabetic nephropathy were dentified and investigated. First, we show that glomerular clusterin is upregulated in diabetic nephropathy and demonstrated that recombinant clusterin protein can protect the podocytes against oxidative stress in vitro.…

Leiden University researchers and their collaborators report the development of new research frameworks that use day-to-day smartphone behavior gathered from a large sample of healthy people to help understand aging, and how aging alters with epilepsy and stroke. These reports occupy two back-to-back…

In the future, physicians may be able to identify dementia much earlier than they can today because a computer algorithm will be able to predict from brain scans how our memory is going to develop.

The emergence of complex diseases resulting from abnormal cell-cell signaling and the spread of infectious diseases caused by pathogens are significant threats to humanity. Unraveling the dynamic mechanisms underlying cell-cell signaling and infectious disease spreading is crucial for effective disease…

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

To make the right clinical decisions or develop effective diagnostic tests and treatments, it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms of a condition or behavior.

Prof. Elizabeth de Lange is concerned with the allocation of resources for the conduct of science towards the goal of best serving the public interest. Also, while she underscores that there is still the need for using animals in drug research, she is concerned about this use, and advocates the use…

We know this, but we don’t act on it: eat healthily, move more, address our stress levels and sleep well. Internist and Professor of Diabetology Hanno Pijl is fascinated by the effect that a healthy lifestyle can have on health. He researches how this lifestyle is achievable and satisfying, for patients…

How to identify patients at risk of developing devastating, metastatic disease and facilitate the development of personalised treatment for prostate cancer patients?

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Prof. dr. A.H. Meijer

The research described in this thesis combines the latest insights in lysosomal function with lysosome centred cell signalling.

Cognitive decline (amongst other problems with attention, concentration, memory) is a common symptom in patients with a variety of brain disorders and has been related to healthy ageing as well. People suffering from cognitive deficits are often significantly hampered in their day-to-day functioning…

Health workers have always sought ways to fight disease in vulnerable groups in the population. It is now clear that such research also benefits more prosperous countries. African worm infections and innovative thermometers have shown Leiden researchers how to fight diseases of affluence and keep health…

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.

This project is part of the Next Generation ImmunoDermatology (NGID) consortium, which focuses on the comprehensive phenotyping of six different immune-mediated inflammatory skin conditions. A common factor contributing to these diseases is a dysfunctional skin barrier. The skin barrier function is…

The aim of this project is to explore the use of statistical interaction models to quantify cross-omics and omics-drug interactions in large-scale clinical and experimental datasets

Prediction of human (CNS) target site concentrations in health and disease In the vision of Prof. de Lange we will only be able to predict human (central nervous system, CNS) target site concentrations and effects if we perform systematic, condition-dependent, integrative, and strictly quantitative…

The Data-Driven Drug Discovery Network (D4N) is an initiative by researchers from Leiden University and collaborators to join efforts in applying and developing novel techniques from data science to drug discovery and related topics from bioinformatics.

To get a feeling of how we operate at LED3 when it comes to Early Drug Discovery, please browse through our case studies. When you select a case study you’ll find relevant contacts.

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Promotores: H.A. Udo De Haes, P.M. Brakefield

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.

Astronomer Donggang Wang, physicist Anne Meeussen and chemists Nick Gerrits and Elliot Mock: all four are receiving a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant for young talent will enable them to spend two years doing research at a foreign university.