The discovery of new medicines is a tedious and lengthy process. On average, over 10,000 molecules need to be studied for one to become a drug and reach the patient. Part of that process are the very costly clinical trials in humans, and candidate drugs often fail due to side effects or lack of efficacy.…

PhD defence

With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery…

In Germany, the United States and even in Vietnam: all over the world, the Leiden discovery of the birth of two planets was shared. Astronomer Sebastiaan Haffert and his team were able to record multiple planets in the making for the first time and published their findings in Nature Astronomy. A unique…

What does Leiden physicist Wolfgang Löffler think about the award of the Nobel Prize for physics to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland?

Research at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) Department of Pathology shows the power of artificial intelligence (AI) applied to endometrial carcinoma microscopy images. The group of Dr. Tjalling Bosse offers novel insights that could improve diagnosis and treatment of uterine cancer. Their…

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.

The research area of this division is focused on the development of novel therapeutic modalities and novel concepts in early drug discovery, in order to better predict ligand-target interactions.

On the 6th of March 2023, Santino Regilme presented his work-in-progress titled 'Global Drug Wars: Contested Normative Orders of Peace, Security, and Human Rights'. If the battle against illegal drugs is construed as a war, how is victory in such a war defined and constructed? If the oppositional…

'A spectacular new Philippine monitor lizard reveals a hidden biogeographic boundary and a novel flagship species for conservation' . CML-researcher Merlijn van Weerd has participated in a new article in Biology Letters about this discovery.

Researchers at LED3 are working together with biopharmaceutical company Galapagos to develop software for use in early drug discovery (funded by NWO). This software is able to design molecules with several simultaneously optimized characteristics and will also take prediction reliability into consideration…

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.

Research conducted at Leiden has established that guts-on-chips respond in the same way to aspirin as real human organs do. This is a sign that these model organs are good predictors of the effect of medical drugs on the human body. Publication in Nature Communications on 15 August.

Do medicines arrive in the right amount at the right spot in our brain? By making a model that depicts our brain in small 'brain blocks', Esmée Vendel tries to find an answer to this question. Her new, mathematical model predicts the concentration of medicines in the brain over time and space. Vendel…

PhD defence

Rosan Kuin started her PhD in July at the LACDR under supervision of prof. Gerard van Westen and Dr. Meindert Lamers. She completed a BSc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the VU University in Amsterdam in 2017. After that she started two master programs, Drug Discovery & Safety with a specialization in…

This study is important because it seeks to uncover whether clinicians' communication influences neurobiological and physiological outcomes for patients.

Drugs-related violence in Mexico is similar in terms of dynamics and strategy to the IS hybrid war in the West. This is the claim made by Teun Voeten. PhD defence 20 September.

Debtelin (’boekje’ in het Mantsjoe) is een initiatief van de Leidse sinoloog en mantsjoeïst Fresco Sam-Sin en is gevuld met artikelen van Leidse studenten en onderzoekers sinologie.

In this project, we aim to obtain a quantitative understanding of the role of the immune system in tumor regression, of the role of tumor cell heterogeneity in cancer growth and of tumor cell migration properties.

SAILS (Society, Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences) is a universitywide initiative aimed at facilitating collaboration across disciplines on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is one of Leiden University's interdisciplinary programmes.

A combination of two potential drugs gives hope of a 'super blockage' of an over-active immune system, Leiden researchers report in Nature. The breakthrough came from the crystallisation of a membrane protein.

How can rare and expensive materials be used more efficiently to produce cleaner and cheaper fuel? Under the guidance of Marc Koper, Professor of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, international teams of scientists have published 3 articles in Nature Communications.

Within this project, PeptoMiktoStars were realized through an orthogonal protecting group strategy and should be investigated further regarding their potential as drug delivery systems in the field of drug delivery to inflamed areas in cancer, bacterial infections or autoimmune diseases.

Luca Giomi has the first results of his ERC consolidator grant. He discovered that epithelial cells move collectively but in different ways, depending on the scale you look at. It is hexatic at small scales, and becomes nematic at larger scales: it is a multiscale order. This collective movement of…

When you think of physics, do you think only of complicated formulas? You’re not the only one. Therefore, every year, the Leiden Insitute of Physics organises the LION Image Award to show another side of physics: beautiful images about intriguing science. The winner of the 2022 photo competition captured…

At Leiden University, in both our biomedical and biological research, we use laboratory animals. Learn more about these specific areas of research and the goals we aim to achieve through these studies.

Immunotherapies for cancer are an emerging class of therapeutic strategies which aim to treat cancer via augmentation of the immune system.

Nausea, neurologic pain and hair loss: some of the severe side effects of chemotherapy. Not necessary, biochemist Liyan Zhang showed. Together with Leiden biologists and others, she achieved great results with a drug that is only active in combination with light. Zhang will defend her PhD on 4 July.

A new app is able to calculate personalised survival probabilities for patients suffering from soft tissue sarcoma. Doctors and patients can use the app to calculate personalised survival probabilities together. Mathematician Anja Rüten-Budde received her doctorate for her research into survival probability…

On Wednesday the 4th of September, Queen Máxima opened the renovated tropical greenhouse complex of the Leiden Hortus Botanicus. At the occasion Máxima met with IBL-PhD student Mahin Ghorbani from Iran and talked with her about her work on drug discovery from Iranian medicinal plants using zebrafish…

In the Master’s programme in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences of Leiden University you are trained for a scientific career in drug research and development.

In the Master’s programme Research in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences of Leiden University you are trained for a scientific career in drug research and development.

In the Master’s programme in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences of Leiden University you are trained for a scientific career in drug research and development.

Key publications of the Computational Drug Discovery group

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated host response to infection, it is associated with significant morbidity, mortality, and with a high financial burden on global healthcare systems. Bacterial infections are the primary cause of sepsis, but the growing prevalence of antimicrobial…

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…

Promotor: M. Danhof, Co-promotores: J. Freijer, A. Yassen

A European consortium has provided a disruptive technological breakthrough to allow the discovery and characterization of novel enzymes for industrial biotechnology. The technology will open the way to more efficient industrial processes such as in the biofuel, animal feed and paper and pulp industr…

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

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water, Co-promotores: J.W. van der Laan, C.L.E. Siezen

The AiChemist project (https://aichemist.eu) coordinated by Helmholtz Munich is an Innovative Doctoral Training Network funded through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA-DN) within the EU Horizon Research Framework, to the sum of €3 million. It brings together leading experts in AI, chemoinformatics…

Chemist Tobias Bauer discovered ways to improve drugs by encapsulating them. Packages with iron nanoparticles, for example, can stimulate immune cells. Bauer will receive his PhD on 9 June.

eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, is well represented at a number of activities in Leiden this week concerning Technology and Society!

Archaeologists from the National Museum of Antiquities (Leiden), the Museo Egizio (Turin, Italy) and Leiden University have found the grave of Panehsy, the 'steward of the temple of (the god) Amun', in Saqqara.