On this page, you will find the recordings of the online This Week's Discoveries from May 12, 2020, as well as a list of speakers since October 2015.

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, , Co-Promotor: Young Hae Choi

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

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Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

The Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) is a centre of excellence for multidisciplinary research on drug discovery and development.

We are committed to provide you with meaningful, rigorous and quality graduate experiences in a personalized environment with a cutting edge research infrastructure and internationally renowned supervisors.

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…

The current projects of the Molecular Physiology group focus on proteins of the endocannabinoid system, kinases and antibacterial targets. MSc- and BSc-students can contact Jessica van Krimpen-Kraaijenoord to apply for research internships.

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.

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,…

On the 3rd of April, Sebastiaan van der Lubben successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Sebastiaan on this achievement!

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.

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.’…

Leiden has much to celebrate: first, 450 years of the Relief of Leiden and then 450 years of Leiden University. And that is no coincidence.

For effective cancer immunotherapy by vaccination, co-delivery of tumour antigens and adjuvants to dendritic cells and subsequent activation of antigen-specific cytotoxic T cells (CTLs) is crucial. In this study, a synthetic long peptide (SLP) harbouring the model CTL epitope SIINFEKL was encapsulated…

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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…

Drug-target binding kinetics determine the time course of the central event in pharmacotherapy: Drug-target interaction.

On an excavation site in Oegstgeest Leiden University archaeologists discovered a very rare silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century. The bowl is decorated with gold-plated representations of animals and plants and inlaid with semi-precious stones. The discovery suggests the existence…

Rob van Wijk gave an interview on the role of zebrafish in drug discovery and development, published in FIGON’s journal Medicines as a preview of LACDR’s representation at the PhD competition during the Dutch Medicines Days (DMD). The entire interview can be read below.

Come to the Night of Discoveries art and science festival on 16 September. Various researchers from the university are speaking at the festival.

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.

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.

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink Co-promotor: Dr. B.E. Snaar

Conference

Researchers at Leiden University have demonstrated that tumours can apply mechanical means to attract the blood vessels they need to be able to grow. The team published this discovery on 2 March in Nature Scientific Reports.

Over a seven year period an international team of scientists has mapped more than a quarter of the northern sky using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope. From Leiden, Astronomer Timothy Shimwell and Huub Röttgering, among others, are involved. It reveals an astonishingly…

During the course of drug discovery translational steps are made.

Veel mensen denken dat zware metalen giftig zijn en mens en natuur altijd schade aanbrengen. Dat beeld moet genuanceerd worden, vindt hoogleraar Sylvestre Bonnet.

Solute carrier (SLC) transporters are a large and diverse class of relatively understudied transmembrane proteins.

From the 11th of May Ewa Snaar-Jagalska has been appointed Professor in the field of cellular tumor biology within the Faculty of Science at the Institute of Biology Leiden. Her research focuses on the cellular tumor biology and human cancer modeling in zebrafish

Chemical biology research at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry is aimed at understanding biological processes at the molecular level to strengthen the knowledge base of human health and disease. The approach to achieve this goal is a fundamental chemical one; with the aid of chemical probes biological…

Late in 2015 a woman gave birth to a baby conceived following the reimplantation of thawed ovarian tissue. The woman was able to become pregnant thanks to transplantation of the tissue that took place in the LUMC.

In a remote cave on the Indonesian island of Borneo, a series of rock art paintings have been discovered. The oldest painting might be the oldest-known example of figurative cave art. Wil Roebroeks, not himself involved in this project, reflects on the findings in several media.

Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

The cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2R) is associated with several inflammatory diseases with an unmet medical need (e.g. Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, reumatoid arthritis). Development of new chemical biology strategies to study this protein is essential to aid future development of drugs for these…

From time to time, manuscripts that have remained hidden for centuries turn up in library collections and archives. In the archives of the 17th-century Bibliotheca Thysiana at the Rapenburg in Leiden, kept in the Leiden University Library, Rotterdam researcher Erik-Jan Bos discovered a hitherto unknown…

The British police discovered 39 bodies in the back of a lorry earlier this month. The refrigeration unit in which the bodies were found had entered the United Kingdom via Belgium.

Using artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics. With that, researchers from Leiden University are nominated by magazine KIJK for the Best Tech-idea of 2021. From September 14 onwards people can vote to crown one of the nominees as the winner.

Nature is a never-ending source of inspiration for the researchers at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). Based on a better fundamental understanding of nature, they are able to seek solutions in the area of health and biodiversity. The theme of IBL is ‘Harnessing biodiversity for health.’

The Chemical Probe Facility is part of the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development (LED3) center. Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) is one of the pillars of chemical biology. ABPP determines the activity of entire protein families in living cells and tissues under physiological conditions, such…

One discovered that arteriosclerosis resembles an autoimmune disease, while the other developed a system to aid in the search for new medications. For these achievements, Marie Depuydt and Jurren de Groot were awarded the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award on the evening of Tuesday 4 June.

Kralen spreken tot de verbeelding. Ze zijn aantrekkelijk en persoonlijk vanwege hun kleuren, materialen, patronen en associaties. Je draagt ze op je lichaam, waar je ze voelt en anderen ze zien. Kralen zijn waardevol en verplaatsbaar, tegelijkertijd reizigers en souvenirs.

Een scheepswrak, zijn bemanning en het leven in de 18de eeuw

With cancer, the immune system is a double-edged sword: it can attack tumour cells, but can also help them grow and spread. It is a question of harnessing it. This is what Professor Karin de Visser argued in her inaugural lecture on 15 November 2019.

Can light-activatable ruthenium compounds be used as a more selective anticancer treatment?