Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Co-Promotor: J. de Jongh

During the course of drug discovery translational steps are made.

This thesis investigates how non-genetic factors, such as inflammation and concomitant medication, impact hepatic drug metabolism and subsequent drug metabolizing phenotype predictions.

The GMP Facility facilitates development and production of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and chemical (peptide) synthesis.

PhD defence

Promotor: A. Kros

Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela published the article 'Pedagogies of Prohibition: Time, Education, and the War on Drugs in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte' in Cultural Anthropology 37. The article’s three sections focus on three forms of temporal control—busyness, punctuality, and rhythm—and each demonstrates…

Promotor: A.P. IJzerman Co-promotor: L.H. Heitman

Clinical development of drugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders has been particularly challenging and still suffers from high attrition rates.

Promotores: Prof.dr. H. S. Overkleeft, Prof.dr. G. A. van der Marel

Analysis of drug adversity

In this article, Marieke Liem and Kim Moeller revisit Goldstein’s framework on the drugs-violence nexus

The aim of this thesis is to expedite and ensure the systematic accuracy of clearance scaling from adults to paediatric patients, with a special focus on drugs undergoing hepatic metabolism.

High throughput microscopy

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.P. IJzerman, Co-Promotor: Dr. L.H. Heitman

This project’s aim is to critically assess current homicide data sources in order to develop a proposal for long-term EU-level monitoring of DRH.

Discovery and development of Central Nervous System (CNS) drugs is hampered by high attrition rates.

Source: Nature Biotechnology, Volume 2014, Issue June (2014)

This thesis aims to develop model-based approaches to optimize drug dosing in patients with overweight and (morbid) obesity.

The lack of success of new CNS drugs in clinical development is in part due to the complexity of the CNS, unexpected side effects, difficulties for drugs to penetrate the brain, but also by the lack of biomarkers.

Promotores: C.A.J. Knibbe; J.N. van den Anker, Co-promotores: H.P.A. van Dongen; B. van Ramshorst

From descriptive to physiological models that can predict oral absorption and elimination of CYP3A substrates across the pediatric age range.

Promotor: A.P.IJzerman Co-promotor: A. Bender

Promotor: B. van de Water

He’s a fast and animated speaker, which is only logical because Gerard van Westen is driving an express train. His destination? A virtual human, consisting of algorithms that predict what an administered substance will do in the body. The train is already a long way down the line and the pharmaceutical…

The main aim of this thesis was to unravel the signaling and regulatory networks that drive tumor cell migration during breast cancer metastasis.

Growth hormone profiles are pulsatile and highly variable between individuals, limiting the implementation of mathemathical models to quantify an individual's secretion.

Supervisor: Lizi Xia

Exploring the mechanism of targeted nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery using the zebrafish model

The path to rational drug and dose selection

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…

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)

Drug induced organ toxicity is the main problem of the drug development and drug usage in the clinic. The liver and kidneys are the most sensitive organs towards drug induced toxicity.

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

This thesis focuses on data found in the field of computational drug discovery. New insight can be obtained by applying machine learning in various ways and in a variety of domains. Two studies delved into the application of proteochemometrics (PCM), a machine learning technique that can be used to…

Microscopic insight on lipid-based nanomedicine in vivo remains limited to the perception of the knowledge that could be obtained: if we interpret only what we see, then we only believe to know. Although believing to know encapsulates an undefined amount of uncertainty in the exploration of lipid-based…

With an emphasis on developing novel miktoarm star polymers termed PeptoMiktoStars, this thesis leverages asymmetric polymeric polypept(o)ide frameworks to advance their effectiveness in delivering hydrophobic drugs and nucleic acids.

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…

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

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…

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

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…

Laura Heitman has been awarded a VIDI grant for her innovative drug research. Heitman strives to optimize a drug’s binding kinetics at its target in order to ultimately fight diseases effectively. She even pleads for a paradigm shift in drug discovery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Researchers from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the Leiden-based biotech company Ncardia have joined forces to develop a new platform that enables the automated production of 3D cardiac microtissues. This platform will allow large numbers of drugs to be tested quickly

Bioprinters that enable scientists to engineer complex tissues and organs. It sounds like science-fiction, but not for the scientists of the Alireza Mashaghi lab at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. The lab has recently been equipped with two state-of-the-art bioprinters: BioX and LumenX+.…