Sjaak Neefjes, Professor of Chemical Immunology at Leiden University, will receive the NWO Spinoza Prize this year. The Spinoza Committee called Neefjes an ‘exceptional researcher whose intelligence is matched by his boldness’. He will use the 2.5 million euro prize to pursue his research into cancer…

Key publications of the Antiviral Pharmacology group.

Psychologist Bernadet Klaassens initiated a large fMRI study on the effect of drugs on brain networks in aging and Alzheimer's disease. It generated a unique data set and insight into a new method to develop drugs for patients with Alzheimer's.

Few researchers see potential in research on glioblastoma, an incurable brain tumour. Alexander Kros brought together colleagues who are up to the challenge. European research funder ERC recently made 10.6 million euros available, a year earlier NWO provided 3 million euros. ‘In six years, we certainly…

Professor by Special Appointment of Clinical Neuropharmacology Geert Jan Groeneveld will deliver his inaugural lecture entitled ‘The importance of the biomarker’ on 11 March 2022. According to him, new genetic knowledge will revolutionise drug research.

In 2020, many of our staff and students have again won prestigious prizes and been awarded important research subsidies.

Toxys, Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Center have agreed immediately to commercialise and also develop further the ToxProfiler technology invented at the two institutions. ToxProfiler allows for rapid toxicity hazard identification of novel and existing drugs, chemicals, and other substances.…

Nanoparticles exhibit a number of adjustable properties, e.g., their size, shape, and surface and core chemistry, which can be further diversified with different functional moieties. This opens a broad field for application in diagnostic and therapy. In this respect, the use of a polymeric hybrid material,…

The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) submitted Pharma-NL to the R&D program of the National Growth Fund, a 20 billion euro program of the Dutch government that intends to create long-term economic growth in The Netherlands.

Bacteria caught red-handed, deeply frozen just as they were about to cause Lyme’s disease. Ariane Briegel is wildly enthusiastic about the wonders she observes thanks to three elements: a freezing technique, a camera-equipped microscope, and AI. ‘It’s fascinating. Every single cell is different.’

Currently, several successful vaccines are available. However, for pathogens with a highly variable genetic composition, and for which serum IgG antibodies are not a useful correlate of protection, effective vaccines are yet to be developed.

The two-years MSc programme spans the entire spectrum of Analytical BioSciences, Biopharmaceutics, Drug Delivery Technology, Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology and Toxicology.

In 2020, Leiden University launched its stimulated interdisciplinary programs, including one focused on regenerative medicine.

PhD defence

The predication of the effect (efficiency and toxicity) of a drug in a patient is very important in (i) clinical decision support and (ii) the development of novel drug treatments.

This thesis aimed to investigate core cross-linked polymeric micelles (CCPMs) and expand their potential for the delivery of hydrophobic drugs and co-factors.

Research in the BioTherapeutics research programme is aimed at a smoother and speedier transition from preclinical research to pharmacological interventions, and the delivery of drugs in the human body by use of small molecules and biologics.

Growth and development affect the metabolism of drugs administered to neonates, infants, and children.

How can we implement the technique of pharmacological resting-state fMRI to improve the diagnosis of dementia?

New drugs for use as tuberculosis (TB) treatment are needed due to the constrains of classical antibiotics against TB and the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains, making TB a harder and harder disease to treat.

Do you recall all those drugs that were hastily proposed as potential treatments for COVID-19? In the event of a future pandemic, the goal is to offer an effective treatment more quickly and efficiently. To achieve this, a team led by Coen van Hasselt is developing a platform that can speed up the process…

PhD defence

Festival

Our educational programmes span the entire spectrum of pharmaceutical education, from training of the next generation drug researchers in the areas of drug design, drug action, and drug use to educating the pharmacists of the future.

Advanced microscopy to understand life and fight disease: that’s the goal of the new NL-BioImaging network that will develop and integrate state-of-the-art microscopy technologies and services. Researchers from all Dutch universities, including Leiden University and the Leiden University Medical Centre,…

Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have managed to culture human heart muscle cells on a massive scale. This is an exceptional achievement because it is very difficult to replicate heart muscle cells outside the body. Using a special technique, the researchers have now created…

How do I conduct research? How do I structure, conduct and record what I’ve thought of and done? The Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences Programme didn’t just want students to perform a series of tests for the Cellular Biochemistry practical course. After a complete re-vamp - ‘From traditional cookbook lab…

Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Center have joined the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH), further strengthening the academic network in which such problems as antimicrobial resistance are studied.

The fact that scientists are increasingly better able to access molecular cell and tissue data also brings with it a new challenge: how can scientists find the information they need for research among the vast amount of data available?

In 2021 many of our students and staff won fantastic prizes and were awarded important research grants. This is our traditional review of these successes as the end of one year marks the beginning of another.

Real-life processes are characterized by dynamics involving time. Examples are walking, sleeping, disease progress in medical treatment, and events in a workflow.

Embryonic stem cells have the remarkable ability to develop into any type of cell. On their way to become for example a liver or a heart cell, they must repeatedly decide between alternative developmental paths. How they make these decisions is largely unknown. An international team of biophysicists…

Three speakers, three fascinating science stories and a well-filled lecture hall. The Niko Tinbergen Lecture had a successful restart on 10 December 2019.

We study cell-fate decision-making using embryonic stem cells as a model system. Stem cells integrate a large number of cues to direct their development into a great variety of cell types.

The ambition of the Medical Systems Biophysics and Bioengineering group led by Alireza Mashaghi is to develop and use physics and engineering concepts and tools for pathophysiology, diagnostics and therapy.

Biological polymers, including proteins and the genome, undergo folding processes crucial for their proper functioning. Even slight changes in the folding structure of these biopolymers can have significant implications, leading to the development of various pathological conditions, such as neurodegenerative…

Cytotoxic T-cells (CTLs) are involved in the clearance of viruses and killing of tumor cells.

Erik Danen is the new Dean of the Graduate School from 1 January. He is a professor at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research and conducts research into cancer drugs. Danen is really looking forward to it: ‘PhD candidates are a special group: that's what I like to dedicate myself to.’

Immune system defends our body against pathogens and cancerous cells, but excessive immunity can in turn lead to tissue damages and diseases. For example, scratching the surface of the eye ignites an immune response that aims at preventing infection but can also lead to edema, angiogenesis and eventually…

The Phantom of the Ego is the first comparative study that shows how the modernist account of the unconscious anticipates contemporary discoveries about the importance of mimesis in the formation of subjectivity.

Over the past years it has been discovered that the population of extra-solar planets is large and diverse.

This thesis describes the antimicrobial discovery strategy developed in our group, the den Hertog Group at the Hubrecht Institute. It includes a cultivation-based screening approach for novel antimicrobial agents from the source of fungi, and a bacterial time-lapse imaging approach for antimicrobial…

This book covers the story of Greece and its central role in our understanding of European civilization, from the Palaeolithic era (400,000 BP) to the early modern period (1950 AD).

Lecture, Workshop

‘A challenging rollercoaster, but also a very bonding and insightful experience,’ that’s how the team of iGEM Leiden 2022 wraps up their participation in the iGEM contest. The contest for synthetic biology climaxed during the Grand Jamboree in Paris. The team ended up in the top 10 of over 360 teams…

Annelien Zweemer was awarded three poster prizes for her poster ‘Discovery of an intracellular binding site for small molecule antagonists at the chemokine receptor CCR2’.

Ad IJzerman, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacochemistry, was made a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands on 26 April. He was presented with the royal honour by Mayor Elbert Roest in the town hall in Bloemendaal.