Promotor: A.P. IJzerman

Microneedle-based vaccination has several advantages over vaccination by using conventional hypodermic needles.

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

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

Inactivating mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes predispose to several types of cancer.

The overall aim of this project is to understand, on the molecular level, how the bacterium V. fischeri cells interacts with their squid host.

Life Sciences Artificial Intelligence Data Science

Contact us about initial teacher education, educational research and teacher professional development

What is the most effective way to eliminate tumour cells? The DNA repair mechanism could play an important role in increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy in the fight against cancerous cells. If we are to influence this mechanism, we need fundamental knowledge about how the mechanism works.

A consortium of research groups, including that of LACDR professor Erik Danen, will use an NWO Perspective grant of nearly five million euros to build a universal standard for organ-on-chip models. They aim to stimulate the application of these chips in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry. Danen…

The Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy (SPP) aims to develop precision medicine approaches to characterise and predict variation in treatment response and enhance translational drug development strategies.

In vitro disease models play a fundamental role in drug research. They enable the systemic identification and validation of disease mechanisms and the discovery of possible drug targets. However, more than often, drug candidates that are identified in vitro fail in the later clinical stages of drug…

Research from the Living Lab is important for society. For example, scientists from the Living Lab discovered that the pesticide thiacloprid is up to 2,500 times more harmful to insects than was thought on the basis of regular lab research. Partly because of this discovery, the European Commission decided…

The Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) is the basis for research and collaborations of the Leiden chemistry groups. Chemistry is the central science enabling a healthy future in a sustainable society. Chemistry researchers at Leiden University take a fundamental approach in finding tailored solutions…

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the phenomenon that pathogens become insensitive to the antibiotics that we use against them. A growing number of pathogens is becoming resistant, with methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) as the most famous example. But while the threat of AMR represents a slow-moving…

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

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.…

This research area is focused on the development and application of novel concepts and models in the emerging area of quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP).

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?

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.

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…

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…

'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.

PhD defence

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…

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.

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.

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…

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

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.