The kidneys play a major role in the elimination of drugs. In children, the exact age-related physiological changes underlying kidney function remain largely unknown.

Promotores: Prof.dr. C.A.J. Knibbe, Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Prof.dr. K. Allegaert (Leuven)

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.

The polypept(o)ide hybrid material attracted more and more attention over the past decade by combining the multifunctional characteristics of polypeptides with the shielding characteristics of polypeptoid-pSar possessing similar properties as a shielding material as polvethylene glycol(PEG). Polysarcosine…

Source: Biosens Bioelectron, Volume 74, pp. 233-42 (2015)

Pectin is a plant cell wall polysaccharide made of mainly D-galacturonic acid (GA) subunits. The potency of the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger to naturally secrete high amounts of pectinases to degrade pectin has been utilized for the industrial production of pectinases.

This thesis describes the design and development of subunit‐selective inhibitors of particular catalytically active subunits of human constitutive proteasomes and immunoproteasomes.

A breakthrough from the PhD research of medical chemist Elmer Maurits may help patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancer in the future. But bringing a discovery from the lab to the clinic is not so easily done. Thanks to NWO's Venture Challenge, Maurits and his team will receive ten weeks of…

Can zebrafish larvae be used as a behavioural model for screening natural products as potential neurotropic drugs?

Can drug screening for tuberculosis treatment be made more efficient?

How do you ensure that a drug has an effect on the right protein – and nothing else? Chemist Anthe Janssen explored various methods for determining the selectivity of potential medicines. He also looked at the substance BIA 10-2474, after a man died in a French clinical trial in 2016. PhD defence on…

Can zebrafish provide a fast, sensitive in vivo vertebrate model for identifying novel mechanisms of Ewing sarcoma progression and for development of new anticancer compounds in a time- and cost-effective manner?

In the search for new medicines against diseases such as cancer, a Leiden team has developed a new workflow. This approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) with molecular modelling and is suitable for finding unknown and innovative drug structures, the researchers proved.

N-acylethanolamines (NAEs), which include the endocannabinoid anandamide, represent an important family of signaling lipids in the brain. The lack of chemical probes that modulate NAE biosynthesis in living systems hamper the understanding of the biological role of these lipids.

Potential drugs that seem promising in the lab, but don’t show any activity in a person: they cost the industry an incredible amount of time and money. That’s why Indira Nederpelt focuses on a more efficient search for new drugs in her PhD, by determining the kinetics of a potential drug earlier on…

Glycosidases are important enzymes in the turnover of polysaccharides and glycoconjugates, and are involved in a range of human pathologies including genetic disorders such as Gaucher and Pompe disease, but also in various cancers.

The coronavirus has the world in its grip. Finding a cure has never been more important. Unfortunately, the development of new drugs for treatment of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus and development of a vaccine are complex, lengthy, and above all costly processes. With the help of computer…

The adenosine receptors are proteins that reside in the extracellular membranes of cells. Activation of adenosine receptors plays a role in many physiological and pathological processes, such as immune responses and cancers.

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?

Developing new drugs is a difficult process. With the aid of artificial intelligence, Pharmaceutical scientist Xuhan Liu has developed methods that can help make drug design cheaper and faster. PhD defence on 15 February.

'It gave our team a big boost to hear that our work was valuable,' says medical chemist Elmer Maurits about the moment they won the Venture Challenge. With their company Iprotics, they want to develop a drug that can better treat patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancers. 25,000 euros of prize…

PhD defence

The elementary excitations of magnets are called spin waves, and their corresponding quasi-particles are known as magnons. The rapidly growing field of Magnonics aims at using them as information carriers in a new generation of electronic devices, (almost) free of electric currents.

Promotores: A.P. IJzerman, H.W.T. van Vlijmen

The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860-1915)

Impressions by Oene de Haan - PhD candidate at Utrecht University.

Pharmaceutical companies, governments and the general public have become increasingly aware that animal models used in drug testing lack vital aspects to serve as an accurate representation of human biology. As models of the human body should become more physiologically relevant, animal models no longer…

Currently, more than 80% of drugs are used in an off-label manner in critically ill neonates.

Drug development is a time- and resource-consuming process that starts with the discovery and validation of a (protein) target that contributes to pathogenesis or disease progression.

Behrouz Karoubi defended his thesis on 15 June 2016

Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process.

In this thesis, the discovery and optimization is described of chemical tools to study the N-acylethanolamine (NAE) biosynthetic pathway.

Media in the Netherlands and abroad reported extensively about the drug research led by Leiden chemist Mario van der Stelt. In this research, Van der Stelt shows which unwanted side-effects a French drug candidate has.

Oncode Investigator Mario van der Stelt and his colleagues have discovered a new potential drug that suppresses chemotherapy induced neuropathic pain.

His article on ‘the War on Drugs’ in Colombia and the Philippines has been in the top five most downloaded articles of Oxford University Press for some time. Now, Assistant Professor Santino Regilme is to receive a NIAS grant to map out the global war on drugs.

What dose of medicine do you give a child? That depends to a large extent on how quickly their kidneys remove the drug from the blood. For ethical reasons it is impossible to measure this directly in little patients. PhD candidate Sinziana Cristea combined different types of modelling and lots of data…

How do macrophages and neutrophils contribute to metastatic onset?

Leiden chemical biologists led by Dr Mario van der Stelt have developed a method to facilitate the search for new drugs. This method has allowed them to take an important first step in the development of a drug against obesity.

Impressions by Dr. Lilian Ruhe

In the research programme Microbial Sciences we perform state-of-the-art research in the field of biotechnology and microbial sciences.

Leiden chemists have developed a new technique with which they can determine the role of kinases – a group of proteins – in a living cell. This technique makes it easier to find new drug targets for diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The team published the findings in the journal Nature…

The zebrafish is a promising vertebrate model organism in early drug discovery and development.

Christmas is coming, which means that 'Our Talents and Discoveries 2016' has been distributed. This also means that it is time to vote for the 'Discoverer of the year 2016'. Each of the eight institutes nominated one researcher that excelled in the past year. Who is your favourite?

This book describes the different approaches for drug delivery to the brain with an emphasis on the physiology of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the governing principles and concepts for drug delivery across the BBB

Lecture