An overview of research themes and projects at ABS.

Urban riots, violent responses by police, drug-related assassinations, child abuse, bar fights: Violence is a core theme in today’s modern society.

On Wednesday the 4th of September, Queen Máxima opened the renovated tropical greenhouse complex of the Leiden Hortus Botanicus. At the occasion Máxima met with IBL-PhD student Mahin Ghorbani from Iran and talked with her about her work on drug discovery from Iranian medicinal plants using zebrafish…

With cancer, a person’s body cells grow uncontrollably. Putting together a detailed picture of how this comes about makes it possible to develop efficient therapies. Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and Leiden University are working together to gain a better understanding…

GRIPonMASH will address the unmet public health need of reducing disease burden and comorbidities associated with Metabolic dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD).

A major goal of ABS research is to overcome one of the major bottle-necks in metabolomic research: the lack of a high-throughput infrastructure in which thousands of samples can be processed in a standardized and cost-effective way (max. a few tens of Euro’s per sample for a full metabolome profile).…

Would you like to know more about our research using laboratory animals or our studies on alternatives to animal testing? If so, take a look at the news articles on the right-hand side of the page (for mobile users, see the bottom of the page).

The last decades it is increasingly recognized that acute as well as chronic postoperative pain is an important problem. Treatment and prevention of postoperative pain is a challenge, especially in special patient populations where there is only limited guidance on how to optimally use opioids.

There is an urgent need for more physiologically relevant cell culture methods to guide compound selection in pre-clinical stages of the drug development pipeline.

In the studies described in this study, we introduce a novel ex vivo human skin barrier repair model. To develop this, we removed the upper layer of the skin, the stratum corneum (SC) by a reproducible cyanoacrylate stripping technique.

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson

Source: J Med Chem (2015)

In summary, the collective results described in this thesis show that nanoparticulate vaccines can be delivered intradermally by coated and hollow microneedles and evoke antigen-specific immune responses.

Childhood obesity is an increasing health issue. In the first part of this thesis comorbidities in children with obesity were studied, concerning the diagnostic process and dosing regimens.

An important feature of atopic eczema (AE) is a decreased skin barrier function. The stratum corneum (SC) lipids - comprised of ceramides (CERs), free fatty acids (FFAs) and cholesterol - fulfill a predominant role in the skin barrier function.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. The most important risk factor for developing this disease is high cholesterol levels in the blood.

Source: Org Biomol Chem, Volume 13, Issue 8, pp. 2407-22 (2015)

Viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) is a group of acute diseases caused by highly infectious viruses including Ebola, Lassa, Dengue viruses. Its high mortality rate poses high risk to public health, however, studies on VHF have been hampered due to the non-availability of proper models and incomplete knowledge…

ChEMBL is a large-scale drug discovery database containing bioactivity information primarily extracted from scientific literature.

The lipids in the uppermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum (SC), play an important role in the skin barrier function. The three main SC lipid classes are ceramides (CER), cholesterol and free fatty acids.

Source: Structure , Volume 22, Issue 8, pp. 1120-1139 (2014)

To increase clinical success rate of drugs, a better understanding of drug action mechanism and disease dynamics is required. Metabolomics, which studies small molecules involved in biochemical processes in organisms, has shown to be a useful tool for this better understanding.

Netherton Syndrome (NTS) is a rare genetic skin disease caused by mutations in the serine protease inhibitor Kazal-type 5 gene, which encodes the lympho-epithelial Kazal-type-related inhibitor. NTS patients have a profound impaired skin barrier function. Because SC lipids play a crucial role in the…

Both psoriasis and atheroslcerosis are diseases characterized by a chronic and systemic inflammatory profile with local lipid disturbances that alter the barrier function of the skin (psoriasis) and cause the development of atherosclerotic plaques (atherosclerosis).

Microneedles represent promising tools for delivery of drugs to the skin. However, before these microneedles can be used in clinical practice, it is essential to understand the process of skin penetration by these microneedles.

Promotores: Prof.dr. E.A.L. Biessen, Prof.dr. T.J.C. van Berkel

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Co-Promotor: S.C.A. de Jager

Promotors: C.A.J. Knibbe, Anthonius de Boer, Co-promotor: M.M.J. van der Vorst

Promotor: J.A. Bouwstra Co-promotor: A. El Ghalbzouri

The objective of this study was to investigate the expression and function of GRHL2 in different breast cancer subtypes.

Vaccination via the skin or the mucosae

Promotor: W. Jiskoot, Co-promotor: A. Hawe

It is the aim of this project to better understand how the physical properties of lipids influences the structure and overall barrier function of the skin.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.A. Bouwstra, Co-promotor: Dr. A. El Ghalbzouri

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

Traditionally, vaccines are administered intramuscularly using conventional hypodermic needles, which cause pain and distress. Microneedles are very short needles (smaller than 1 mm) that are practically invisible to the naked eye.

Immunotherapies for cancer are an emerging class of therapeutic strategies which aim to treat cancer via augmentation of the immune system.

The stratum corneum is the outermost skin layer and consists of dead cells embedded in a lipid matrix.

In this thesis, we have studied the potential of the zebrafish larval model in studying the ECS, as a complementary model to the existing rodent models.

There is considerable need for improved skin models to develop safe and efficient drugs for skin delivery as well as for cosmetic and chemical product testing on the skin.

Our in-house human skin equivalents contain all stratum corneum (SC) barrier lipid classes, but have a reduced level of free fatty acids (FAs), of which a part is mono-unsaturated. These differences lead to an altered SC lipid organization and thereby a reduced barrier function compared to human skin.…

Research in the Lars Jeuken group focusses on redox-active proteins and membranes enzymes, aiming to understand bacterial respiration at the molecular level for the development of antimicrobials and semi-artificial photo-synthetic cells.

This thesis focuses on using liposomes in two different treatment strategies; vaccination (or immunotherapy) and delivery of a small molecule, and in two different disease models; cancer and atherosclerosis.

Promotors: W. Jiskoot; G.J. Witkamp, Co-promotor: M.R. Nejadnik

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

Animal models suggest that the chemokine ligand 2/CC-chemokine receptor 2 (CCL2/CCR2) axis plays an important role in the development of inflammatory diseases. However, CCR2 antagonists have failed in clinical trials because of a lack of efficacy.

A main goal of MSBB research is to address the major bottle-necks in combatting viral diseases: the lack of experimental models that are representative of human pathology and are cost effective and versatile. Viral diseases such as those that cause viral hemorrhagic syndromes or severe acute respiratory…

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide.

Developing robust and comprehensive analytical methods to size and quantify subvisible particles in biopharmaceutical products.