In the Drug Research theme, we primarily work with rodents. Rodents, such as mice, are one of the most common laboratory animals. These small mammals are easily housed and exhibit a rapid rate of reproduction.

How are new drugs developed? This question is central to the Minor Modern Drug Discovery (MDD), which covers the entire trajectory from disease to drug molecule and vice versa. The various research groups involved offer a complementary and interdisciplinary perspective by connecting the diverse subjects…

Drug-related homicide (DRH) has the potential to act as a valuable indicator of wider drug-related crime. Yet DRH remains a knowledge gap within this broader field of study.

In the research programme Drug Discovery & Safety, we are interested in the efficacy and safety of new drugs and novel means to decipher these aspects. Hence, we employ advanced imaging and high-throughput screening techniques next to computational approaches such as chem- and bioinformatics.

We focus on a better understanding of the mechanisms of cancer drug resistance and metastasis.

Our research in the area of safety sciences aims to increase the mechanistic understanding of cellular toxicity of drugs and, in a broader sense, chemicals.

Research in this group, headed by Gerard van Westen, focusses on computational methods integrated in different parts of the drug discovery process. More specifically, topics include innovative treatments for cancer, selectivity modeling, translational research, allosteric modulation, drug resistance…

Improving healthcare with our scientific discoveries: that is the goal of pharmaceutical research at Leiden University. And there’s a lot involved in that. Our research starts with the discovery of the effect achieved by a particular substance, and sometimes continues all the way through to the development…

The drug discovery pipeline is used to describe the stages in drug discovery. The earliest stage concerns with the identification of potential targets and molecules ('hits') that can modulate their function, while more advanced stages are about developing these hits into viable experimental drugs and…

In this research group, headed by Prof. Erik Danen, the aim is to unravel cellular signaling mechanisms in normal and diseased cells, with a long-standing interest in cell adhesion signaling. In complex multicellular organisms such as ourselves, a division of labor emerges where different tissues and…

New or improved treatments for chronic and acute illness.

Mechanisms fro drug resistance

This minor is focused on fundamental scientific research required for discovery of new drug targets and development of new drugs. Students learn how disease and drug-induced alterations in signaling pathways can be used for the discovery of new drug targets and the development of personalized drugs.

There are many complex links in the chain that provides patients with new drugs: from fundamental science, to clinical tests, to production. The entire chain can be found in Leiden. Leiden University, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the businesses at the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP)…

The research within the Division of Cell Systems and Drug Safety, headed by Prof. Bob van de Water, is focused on novel therapeutic modalities and novel concepts in early drug discovery, in order to develop more effective and safer therapeutic strategies. We generate advanced cell and computational…

Can drugs that target host signaling pathways be used to eradicate antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development (LED3) is a multidisciplinary research network at Leiden University dedicated to advancing innovative approaches in early drug discovery and development. The initiative brings together 58 principal investigators from four institutes—the Institute of Biology…

In this research group, headed by Bob Van de Water, cell signaling programs that underlie adverse drug reactions as well as cancer development and progression are unraveled. Adverse drug reactions involve cell injury in critical target organ cells which leads to the activation of cellular stress response…

To get a feeling of how we operate at LED3 when it comes to Early Drug Discovery, please browse through our case studies. When you select a case study you’ll find relevant contacts.

Lecture

We cover the entire spectrum from target identification to the evaluation of the efficacy and safety of novel medicines in clinical practice.

The Data-Driven Drug Discovery Network (D4N) is an initiative by researchers from Leiden University and collaborators to join efforts in applying and developing novel techniques from data science to drug discovery and related topics from bioinformatics.

Hospital pharmacies face significant challenges: the demand for sterile drug reconstitutions is increasing, while specialized personnel remain scarce. Automation offers a potential solution, but its practical implementation in hospitals is still unclear.

Supervisor: Indira Nederpelt

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

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

Discovery of metastasis promoting candidate drug targets

A next, general pharmacological problem to be tackled is how drug-target binding kinetics in vivo, affects target occupancy as an important indicator of the time-course of drug effects.

In previous studies at our laboratory it was demonstrated that drug exposure of HepG2 cells can lead to an altered TNFα-induced NF-κB oscillatory phenotype, concurrent with a synergistically increased sensitivity for TNFα-induced apoptosis.

Harm reduction in practice: a comparative analysis of the Dutch and Brazilian approach towards drug users.

High-throughput holistic preclinical screens are increasingly used in drug discovery, to assess both drug efficacy and drug safety.

Citizens in multiple crime-ridden countries strongly support the militarization of security—that is, placing the military in charge of traditional policing duties. Yet, we know little about the determinants of such support. Do people approve of militarization even in the face of human fatalities? Political…

Lecture

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water, Co-promotor: L.S. Price

Over several decades, a variety of computational methods for drug discovery have been proposed and applied in practice. With the accumulation of data and the development of machine learning methods, computational drug design methods have gradually shifted to a new paradigm, i.e. deep learning methods…

In the last decades, activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) has emerged as a powerful chemical tool that may aid the ever-challenging drug discovery process.

Promotor: M. Danhof Co-promotor: O.E. Della Pasqua

Can we develop a generic method for Quan/Qual analysis of small molecule drugs, their metabolites and endogenous metabolites in (pre-)clinical samples?

Although rarely considered by the pharmaceutical industry or clinicians, 24-hour rhythms in physiology are a factor of potential influence on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs.

Source: ChemMedChem (2015)

This thesis describes the importance of being able to control the selectivity of potential drug candidates.

Another research line is the development of a spatial CNS drug distribution model, by ultimately including the 3-dimensional anatomical organization of the CNS.

Heart failure is a major health care problem with high mortality.

This thesis focuses on the application of lipid-based nanomedicine in drug delivery, including small molecular antitumor drugs and biomacromolecules including mRNA, and evaluates their biological performance.

Data analysis with Python and R are rapidly becoming essential skills for modern scientists. Therefore, we are offering courses to develop your scientific computing skills. Those courses are optional for LACDR PhD candidates.

A novel mathematical model describes spatial-temporal drug distribution within one or more brain units, which are cubic representations of a piece of brain tissue with brain capillaries at the edges.

Human and animal cells are very complex: very different chemical processes are going on at the same time, but they are separated from each other because the cells are divided in compartments. These compartments may also have a profound effect on the potential efficacy of therapeutics, because the drug…

In the literature, several types of microneedles have been extensively described. However, porous microneedle arrays only received minimal attention. Hence, only little is known about drug delivery via these microneedles. However, porous microneedle arrays may have potential for future microneedle-based…

Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP, also termed chemical proteomics), is one of the pillars of chemical biology, and at LED3 we have taken it to the next level. ABPP allows the assessment of protein function in live cells and tissues, which means that the activity of a complete protein family can…

This thesis aims to test in vitro pipelines to rapidly and cost-effectively identify molecular mechanisms that drive adverse outcomes in clinical use.