Chemotherapy that does not harm the body, but effectively fights cancer cells: that is the goal of chemist Sylvestre Bonnet and his team. During his PhD research, chemist Xuequan Zhou brought that goal a little closer. He developed molecules that, upon injection in the bloodstream, self-assemble into…

Promotor: B. van de Water

Growth hormone profiles are pulsatile and highly variable between individuals, limiting the implementation of mathemathical models to quantify an individual's secretion.

The kidneys play a major role in the elimination of drugs. In children, the exact age-related physiological changes underlying kidney function remain largely unknown.

Drug induced organ toxicity is the main problem of the drug development and drug usage in the clinic. The liver and kidneys are the most sensitive organs towards drug induced toxicity.

The polypept(o)ide hybrid material attracted more and more attention over the past decade by combining the multifunctional characteristics of polypeptides with the shielding characteristics of polypeptoid-pSar possessing similar properties as a shielding material as polvethylene glycol(PEG). Polysarcosine…

Supervisor: Lizi Xia

Can a new proteomics workflow be developed to link genes and gene clusters to bioactive molecules, identify novel compounds and enhance the production in the Streptomyces lividans enzyme?

Promotores: Prof.dr. C.A.J. Knibbe, Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Prof.dr. K. Allegaert (Leuven)

Source: Biosens Bioelectron, Volume 74, pp. 233-42 (2015)

Can zebrafish larvae be used as a behavioural model for screening natural products as potential neurotropic drugs?

The main aim of this thesis was to unravel the signaling and regulatory networks that drive tumor cell migration during breast cancer metastasis.

How do you ensure that a drug has an effect on the right protein – and nothing else? Chemist Anthe Janssen explored various methods for determining the selectivity of potential medicines. He also looked at the substance BIA 10-2474, after a man died in a French clinical trial in 2016. PhD defence on…

This thesis focuses on data found in the field of computational drug discovery. New insight can be obtained by applying machine learning in various ways and in a variety of domains. Two studies delved into the application of proteochemometrics (PCM), a machine learning technique that can be used to…

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.

Dr. Tommy van Steen, Universitair Docent in Cyber Security Governance bij het Institute of Security and Global Affairs, werd geïnterviewd door mediaplanet over internetcriminaliteit en hoe wij deze dagelijks kunnen tegenkomen via onze computers en telefoons.

Children could do better at school if they exercise during their maths, English and science lessons, a study has suggested. Researchers reviewed 42 studies that looked at the benefits of physical activity in the classroom for youngsters.

Developing new drugs is a difficult process. With the aid of artificial intelligence, Pharmaceutical scientist Xuhan Liu has developed methods that can help make drug design cheaper and faster. PhD defence on 15 February.

In photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT), a biologically active compound is caged by a light-cleavable protecting group.

Pharmaceutical companies, governments and the general public have become increasingly aware that animal models used in drug testing lack vital aspects to serve as an accurate representation of human biology. As models of the human body should become more physiologically relevant, animal models no longer…

Currently, more than 80% of drugs are used in an off-label manner in critically ill neonates.

Potential drugs that seem promising in the lab, but don’t show any activity in a person: they cost the industry an incredible amount of time and money. That’s why Indira Nederpelt focuses on a more efficient search for new drugs in her PhD, by determining the kinetics of a potential drug earlier on…

Laura Heitman has been awarded a VIDI grant for her innovative drug research. Heitman strives to optimize a drug’s binding kinetics at its target in order to ultimately fight diseases effectively. She even pleads for a paradigm shift in drug discovery.

Last year, chemists Dennis Wander and Hermen Overkleeft contributed to an important discovery about a widely used cancer drug. Their research has now been recognised as Finalist for the PNAS Cozzarelli Prize in the Biomedical Sciences class.

How do macrophages and neutrophils contribute to metastatic onset?

Media in the Netherlands and abroad reported extensively about the drug research led by Leiden chemist Mario van der Stelt. In this research, Van der Stelt shows which unwanted side-effects a French drug candidate has.

Oncode Investigator Mario van der Stelt and his colleagues have discovered a new potential drug that suppresses chemotherapy induced neuropathic pain.

How can new compounds relieve cancer patients of severe side effects?

His article on ‘the War on Drugs’ in Colombia and the Philippines has been in the top five most downloaded articles of Oxford University Press for some time. Now, Assistant Professor Santino Regilme is to receive a NIAS grant to map out the global war on drugs.

A full overview of MCBIM PhD theses.

What dose of medicine do you give a child? That depends to a large extent on how quickly their kidneys remove the drug from the blood. For ethical reasons it is impossible to measure this directly in little patients. PhD candidate Sinziana Cristea combined different types of modelling and lots of data…

Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process.

PhD candidate Dennis Wander searches for the best of both worlds. That is to say: a cancer drug that is effective and also has minimal side effects. To this end, he makes new molecules inspired by two existing medicines. And not without result: ‘We have created a new variant that is very promising.’…

Leiden chemists have developed a new technique with which they can determine the role of kinases – a group of proteins – in a living cell. This technique makes it easier to find new drug targets for diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The team published the findings in the journal Nature…

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.

In the research programme Microbial Sciences we perform state-of-the-art research in the field of biotechnology and microbial sciences.

This book describes the different approaches for drug delivery to the brain with an emphasis on the physiology of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the governing principles and concepts for drug delivery across the BBB

Can zebrafish provide a fast, sensitive in vivo vertebrate model for identifying novel mechanisms of Ewing sarcoma progression and for development of new anticancer compounds in a time- and cost-effective manner?

Animal Sciences’ contribution to the Bioactive Molecules research theme includes research on molecules from natural sources, such as plants, insects, and snake venom, with the aim to identify novel anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, and anti-diabetic agents.

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…

Therapeutic proteins have revolutionized the treatment of many severe diseases like multiple sclerosis, haemophilia, diabetes and many more. Unfortunately, even recombinant proteins with structures (almost) identical to those of their endogenous counterparts often induce the formation of anti drug antibodies…

Minister Grapperhaus wants to use intelligence services in the investigation of drug crime. There are many doubts about this wish in the intelligence world. Paul Abels, Professor by Special Appointment Governance of Intelligence and Security Services at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA),…

Utilizing the polymeric platform of polypept(o)ides, this thesis describes synthesis and investigation of novel triblock copolymers to obtain carrier systems with multiple compartments for efficient siRNA delivery. Although the individual microstructure of nanoparticles differs depending on the polymeric…

At high doses, drug candidate BIA 10-2474 binds not only to the protein that it targets, but to other proteins as well. It thus deactivates proteins that are involved in the metabolism of nerve cells. This is what an international group of researchers from Leiden University and Erasmus MC, among others,…

There are more molecules that could conceivably be candidate drugs than there are stars in the universe. How can we ever efficiently identify those molecules? Professor of AI and Medicinal Chemistry, Gerard van Westen: ‘I’m going to use artificial intelligence as the co-pilot to make an automated search.’…