In STAYAHEAD data-intensive approaches are being developed to ”decode the human immunome” with a focus on a global vaccine strategy. They have developed a rapid mass spectrometric test to analyse in real-time large numbers of variants of SARS-CoV-2 and the host immune response, and use these data to…

Antibiotic resistance, caused by widespread use of antibiotics, leads to bacterial infections that are difficult, if not impossible, to treat and is a major worldwide health concern.

How do mycobacteria subvert the defenses of host immune cells?

PhD defence

What are the host immune defence mechanisms that control intracellular infections and how are these subverted by pathogens?

We aim to develop a microfluidic platform that can parallelize testing the performance and characteristics of pure, mixed and environmental bacteriophage samples.

The outbreaks of AIDS and COVID-19 showed clearly how infectious viruses can influence people’s lives. Investigating the changes in the host metabolism may provide a paradigm shift to consider immune-metabolic interactions as therapeutic targets.

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…

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Prof. dr. A.H. Meijer

The Translational Immuno-Pharmacology group works on translating the efficacy of anti-infective therapy from preclinical (e.g. in vivo) to clinical, and is led by Rob van Wijk. Infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, are in constant need of new therapies that work better, faster, and with less risk…

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Researchers at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Radboud university medical center have been given the green light to deliberately infect volunteers with malaria in order to test a highly promising vaccine on them.

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 word ¨pyroptosis¨ can be understood as ¨fiery falling¨, which describes the bursting of pro-inflammatory signals from the dying cell. Our observations indicate that pyroptosis also ¨spreads like wildfire¨ and once a cell dies via pyroptotic cell death, neighbouring cells are more prone to die as…

Researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Oncode have created a tracking system that can reveal how often cells have divided. This allowed them to find a yet undiscovered population of immune cells: young memory cells that behave like stem cells.…

Tuberculosis causes 1.5 million deaths yearly and anti-tuberculosis therapies are threatened by emergence of drug resistance. Development of innovative drug combinations should be accelerated with the use of translational pharmacological models. Moreover, host-directed therapies (HDT), which stimulate…

Parasitic worms and stomach bacteria suppress immune reactions such as allergic responses. Parasitologist Hermelijn Smits and lung specialist Christian Taube from the LUMC are trying to learn from these micro-organisms.

How do plants lure microscopically small 'support teams' into their roots for protection against diseases? And what functions are activated in the microbes and the plants?

The Quantitative Pharmacology group headed by Coen van Hasselt focusses on the application of state-of-the-art quantitative pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology modeling combined with translational experimental models to develop personalized treatment strategies for antibiotics and to combat antimicrobial…

Influenza CD8(+) T-cell epitopes are conserved amongst influenza strains and can be recognized by influenza-specific cytotoxic T-cells (CTLs), which can rapidly clear infected cells. An influenza peptide vaccine that elicits these CTLs would therefore be an alternative to current influenza vaccines,…

Aspergillus niger is an important industrial producer of organic acids and enzymes producing large amounts of spent fungal biomass.

Supervisor: P.J.J. Hooykaas

The European Lead Factory has been created with the ultimate goal to develop lead drug candidates to address neglected diseases including bacterial infections, psychiatric disorders and oncology.

People who have taken antibiotics in the past three months pay more attention to negative facial expressions, according to research by postdoc Katerina Johnson and assistant professor Laura Steenbergen. This may explain how antibiotics increase the risk of developing depression.

Timely, adequate and optimal treatment of infectious diseases is essential for the survival of patients with bacterial infections (Surviving Sepsis campaign).

Fungal infections pose a significant threat to individuals with compromised immune systems and despite advancements in diagnosis and treatment, they continue to jeopardize patient’s health.

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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…

The focus of the Antiviral Pharmacology group led by Anne-Grete Märtson is optimizing antiviral therapy for different viral infections by conducting clinical trials and using innovative computational and dynamic laboratory methodologies.

Can we find and commercialise new treatments for chronic disease that affect our ageing population? And how can we customise this research and development programme to the small but highly-developed Netherlands research economy?

Gubbens

An overview of Quantitative Pharmacology projects

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.

How can novel bioimaging technologies and vertebrate model species be used to gain a better understanding of early cellular behaviours with the ultimate goal to increase our understanding of human development and disease processes?

The infectious diseases malaria and tuberculosis are responsible for 2.1 million deaths every year. Leiden researchers are currently testing a new tuberculosis vaccine.

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.’

Neuraminidases are enzymes that cleave glycosidic linkages of sialic acid. These enzymes are involved in influenza infections as well as in many cellular processes in mammals and micro-organisms.

In this thesis, I study 1) metabolic alterations in tuberculosis related to wasting syndrome in human patients as well as in rodent and fish animal models. 2) effects of the mutation of the leptin gene on cachexia and diabetes in rodent and zebrafish animal models.

When does it rain when air is oversaturated with moisture? How does an infection spread among the population? The problems that mathematician Professor Frank den Hollander tries to solve come from physics, chemistry and biology.

Emerging from the first wave relatively unscarred to an increase in infections. This research analyses the response from the Bulgarian government to Covid-19.

Researchers from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have discovered how malaria parasites escape the immune system of mosquitoes. The so-called QC enzyme changes proteins on the outside of the malaria parasite such that the immune cells are unable to recognise the parasite. As a result, the parasite…