Due to the increasing resistance to certain antibiotics, the life-threatening condition sepsis is becoming harder to treat. For her PhD project, Leiden pharmacologist Feiyan Liu used mathematical modeling to find out how antibiotics can be used more effectively to cure sepsis.

PhD defence

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.

Alireza Mashaghi and his research team have created a new framework to understand shapes of proteins and DNA. With this framework, many diseases can be understood better.

A theoretical project on the insights gained by human (including infant), nonhuman animal and computational studies on artificial grammar learning; identifying the critical questions for future research by developing novel experimental and computational approaches to address these issues.

Mapping of bacterial genomes to combat infectious diseases

Every year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant is awarded to a prospective PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology. This year, the grant went to Maia Casna, enabling her to study respiratory disease in the past. ‘My hypothesis is that the rapid formation of cities in the medieval Netherlands, must…

While there are numerous and extremely advanced methods to sequence the genome, only a few methods exist to sequence the proteome. The Vidi project of Grégory Schneider promises to shed light on the most difficult paradigm of proteomics: achieving an error-free determination of the sequence of single…

Marlien van Mever delved into the analysis of tiny samples, cerebrospinal fluid from transgenic mouse models for example. She validated methods that can now be used to study brain diseases such as migraine and epilepsy. Van Mever will receive her PhD on 14 June.

Fake news about ‘patient zero’ and hyperbolic headlines warning about the ‘yellow peril.’ Leiden researchers have spotted fake news galore about coronavirus as well as racial stereotypes about the Chinese. How harmful is this?

Cardiovascular diseases are among the most frequent causes of death in the world. The main underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases is the development of atherosclerosis in the medium and large-sized arteries.

Can thrips resistance in strawberry be explained based on secondary metabolite profiles and plant morphological traits?

How is vegetative development regulated in plants and how does this affect a plant’s life history strategy?

We aim to engineer streptomycetes to fully exploit their potential for natural product productions, by a rational design and evolution approach.

The studies described in this thesis deal with glycosidases, in particular alpha-galactosidases.

Α-synuclein, a protein associated with Parkinson’s disease, proves to bind with membranes in a surprisingly efficient way. It confirms scientists’ suspicion of the protein’s leading role in the transmission of neurotransmitters between nerve cells in the brain. Publication in PLoS ONE.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Prof.dr. P.H.A. Quax

How can zebrafish models be used to gain a better understanding of host-pathogen interaction mechanisms and to screen new drugs for infectious disease treatment?

How can Staphylococcus aureus bacteria subvert the host immune system?

TRANSAUTOPHAGY is a European COST action to promote multidisciplinary research on autophagy and translation of knowledge to applications.

Atherosclerosis is the main underlying pathology of cardiovascular disease. Atherosclerosis is caused by an immune response which is directed against (modified) lipoproteins which accumulate in the vessel wall.

According to the amyloid cascade hypothesis, accumulation of beta-amyloid (Aβ) peptides initiates the pathological cascade in Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

How can cell wall engineering approaches be used to improve streptomycetes for industry to make new antibiotics?

We aim to unravel the complex and intertwining regulatory systems that control development and antibiotic production in streptomycetes.

RARE-NL, a new collaboration between university hospitals, hopes to find treatments for rare diseases. Professor Teun van Gelder is representing the LUMC in the initiative.

When parking in reverse, your car skids off just a little, hitting the wall of the parking garage. On the car dashboard, a warning light immediately starts blinking. This technique from new cars can also be used for another purpose, namely in the treatment of Parkinson's disease patients.

We perform multidisciplinary research at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels of animal biology to increase fundamental understanding of health and disease.

Alireza Mashaghi from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) will use state-of-the-art technology to investigate proteins that play a role in muscular dystrophy. His goal is to provide new insights for designing novel therapeutic strategies in the future. To accomplish this, Mashaghi receives…

Hans Ulrich Scherer is Professor of Rheumatology, in particular Translational Rheumatology. He wants to build bridges between research and clinical practice and between departments and organisations at home and abroad. Scherer will give his inaugural lecture next Friday. ‘To make progress, we have to…

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from 15 departments at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) realised they could do more for patients if they joined forces. This is how the BEAT-COVID group has been able to rapidly gain knowledge about COVID-19, the role of the immune system and…

When mosquito eggs hatch in nutrient-rich water, the mosquitoes are larger and they can also fly further. That is the first conclusion of a study from by the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH) by PhD-student Sam Boerlijst.

Fourteen bachelor’s and master’s students are representing Leiden University in this year’s International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM). Their plan: to create a kit that can be used to quickly identify infectious diseases in case of an outbreak.

Patients with skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis, sometimes spend a lifetime searching for the right medication. To help these patients faster and better, scientists across the country are joining forces. The Next Generation ImmunoDermatology (NGID) project, with LACDR professor Robert Rissmann…

A job thanks to COVID—something not many people can claim. But PhD candidate Vera Arntzen can. Over the past four years, she has mapped two crucial characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Thanks to her research, experts can now make well-informed decisions on matters like quarantine duration, which…

We aim to develop a microfluidic platform that can parallelize testing the performance and characteristics of pure, mixed and environmental bacteriophage samples.

Lecture

At the division of BioTherapeutics, Amanda Foks, Bram Slütter and Ilze Bot have obtained a €4 million research grant from the HORIZON 2022 EIC Pathfinder Challenge “Cardiogenomics”, entitled “B-specific: B-cell related gene and protein markers with prognostic and therapeutic value for CVD”.

A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

Metabolic diseases are a burden on the European population and health care system. It is increasingly recognised that individual differences with respect to history, lifestyle, and genetic make-up affect disease progression and treatment response. A Systems Medicine approach, based on computational…

An e-coaching programme helps people with chronic kidney disease, particularly in areas that patients themselves want to work on. ‘A healthy lifestyle is important for patients with kidney disease: it can slow down the loss of kidney function and there will be fewer complications,’ Katja Cardol explains…

A vitamin D deficiency is often associated with smoggy English industrial cities during the Industrial Revolution, but research carried out on skeletons now suggests that the ‘English disease’ was also prevalent in rural areas of the Netherlands. Doctoral defence on 29 January.

During illness, the stiffness or viscosity of cells can change. Tom Evers demonstrated this by measuring such properties of human immune cells for the first time. ‘The stiffness of certain cells could be a way to make a diagnosis,’ Evers said. He defended his thesis on March 26th.

Detection of cerebral beta-amyloid (Abeta) by targeted contrast agents remains of great interest to aid the in vivo diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Bis-styrylbenzenes have been previously reported as potential Abeta imaging agents.

Childhood obesity is an increasing health issue. In the first part of this thesis comorbidities in children with obesity were studied, concerning the diagnostic process and dosing regimens.

Acute cardiovascular clinical events such as myocardial infarction and cerebral stroke represent the major cause of death in Western societies. These pathologies are primarily resulting from atherosclerosis, a progressive condition characterized by the accumulation of lipids, immune cells, and fibrous…