Grammatical gender is famously the most puzzling of the grammatical categories. We have a solid typology of gender systems, yet exciting and unexpected patterns keep turning up which defy easy classification and straightforward analysis. Some of these question, stretch or threaten to cross the outer…

Through his project we will unravel the global regulatory networks that control gene expression in Streptomyces bacteria and allow them to properly respond to major changes in the environment; we will then harness this knowledge to activate and identify novel antibiotics

Identifying natural plant-associated bacteria that provide targeted inhibition of pathogens through the production of antimicrobial peptides.

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The central question of this Vici proposal is to investigate if, and how actinobacteria exploit life without a cell wall.

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?

Leiden University is a unique international centre for the advanced study of languages, cultures, arts, and societies worldwide, in their historical contexts from prehistory to the present.

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) is one of seven institutes housed within the Faculty of Humanities.

The Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy (SPP) aims to develop precision medicine approaches to characterise and predict variation in treatment response and enhance translational drug development strategies.

Key publications of the Quantitative Pharmacology group

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.

LED3 is the combined effort of three excellent institutes of Leiden University. Through joined hands, we are able to give rise to a more effective early drug discovery pipeline. Let us briefly introduce the three institutes.

Diplomatica: A Journal of Diplomacy and Society addresses the broad range of work being done across the social sciences and the humanities that takes diplomacy as its focus of investigation.

The goal of hit and lead optimization is to optimize suitable chemical starting points that can modulate a drug target. The methods and technologies used are similar to those in Hit Discovery, but once the compound has shown activity in an animal model, it moves from 'hit' to 'lead.'

Antibiotic resistance is one of the major threats to human health. This week the National Antibiotic Development Platform, NADP, was officially launched via a meeting in Utrecht, with many of the stakeholders in the field present.

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.

Diplomatic Studies (DIST) is a peer-reviewed book series that encourages original work on the theory and practice, processes and outcomes of diplomacy.

From 12 – 16 May, prof. Fokkens and five RMA students (Kiki de Bondt, Jordy Aal, Mette Langbroek, Gwendolynn de Groote and Bastiaan Steffens) visited Cambridge for a two-day workshop with prof. Marie Louise Sørensen, staff and students of Cambridge University, and a number of the members of the Cambridge…

Prof. Gilles van Wezel and Prof. Mike Richardson of the Institute of Biology Leiden received €1.4 million to find new antibiotics.

Professors Jos Raaijmakers (NIOO) and Gilles Van Wezel (IBL) received an STW Perspectief- grant of €3 million from the Dutch Technology Foundation and several supporting companies.

The goal of hit discovery is to identify suitable chemical starting points to modulate a drug target. A hit can be, a.o., a small molecule, a protein or mRNA. Hit identification is performed via rational design, genome mining, (targeted) library screening, or in silico approaches.

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…

Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) is an internationally oriented institute for research and education in biology. We are part of the Faculty of Science at Leiden University.

No, this isn’t about a Star Wars Alliance that wants to suppress The Resistance. Rather, the EPIC Alliance brings together scientific experts from seven countries to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Leiden professor Nathaniel Martin is part of the 11-member consortium.

Tackling key challenges of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry to aid drug discovery is one of the focus areas of Leiden University. To this end, the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development network (LED3) was established by the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Institute of Biology Leiden…

For the first time, researchers were able to grow organoids from snake venom glands. The lab-grown 3-D structures can produce snake venom molecules. This is a major step in finding treatments to tackle snakebite, which causes over 100,000 deaths each year. Publication in top journal Cell.

Edith Schippers, Minister of Health, will be investing six million euros over the coming four years to boost research on new antibiotics. The programme will be set up by several different parties, including the Leiden Centre for Antimicrobial Research.

The opportunistic bacterium Burkholderia cenocepacia is feared by cystic fibrosis patients and is emerging in hospital-acquired infections. An international study sheds new light on the infection mechanism of this opportunistic pathogen that may have large implications for treatment strategies.

Various consortia in which Leiden University is represented are beginning interdisciplinary research, which will bring scientific and societal breakthroughs within reach. Knowledge institutions, government and private parties are working closely together on the projects.

Laura van Broekhoven always knew she wanted to study archaeology, and that’s exactly what she did. Now this Leiden alumna is director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, one of the four museums of the University of Oxford.

On this page the programme and sessions can be found.

An international team with researchers from Leiden revealed how a bacterium repurposed an internal system to control its movements. Movement control is very important in host invasion, which can lead to disease. Publication on 27 April in Nature Communications.

PhD student Wen Yang discovered how certain cell receptors in E. coli bacteria signal 'smells'. With the use of ice-cold electron microscopy microbiologists from Leiden gain more insight into how bacteria respond to their environment. Publication in mBio.

IBL-researcher Phil Elks in the group of Annemarie Meijer won the Cell Observatory Publication of the Year 2013. He received the award for his paper in PLoS Pathogens, showing that activation of hypoxia signaling protects against mycobacterial infection.

Biological chemist Nathaniel Martin is going to test an alternative antibiotic that can combat common resistant bacteria such as MRSA. For this purpose, he will receive 350,000 euros from the NWO's NACTAR programme. ‘We want to know how safe and effective our antibiotic is in a realistic situation.’

How can you solve equations that define not ‘just’ curves, but also two-dimension surfaces or even higher-dimensional objects? That’s the big question that mathematician Martin Bright and his team will be trying to answer. They’ve received a NWO Science-XL grant of 2.8 million euros.

Conference

In otherwise energetic desserts at the bottom of the sea, researchers have found oases where microbes can harvest energy. Remarkably, the microbes first have to be buried under starving conditions for 80,000 years. An international group of researchers, amongst them José Mogollón from the Insitute of…

Many of the challenges of our time are too complex to be resolved within the confines of a single discipline. Leiden University is a broad-based university where an incredible number of research fields converge. That makes us the ideal breeding ground for, and practitioners of, interdisciplinary research…

The Faculties of Leiden University have developed several themes for research cooperation between Leiden University and its Indonesian partners.

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Many of our staff and students have won an award, received a grant, obtained an academic fellowship for their quality or have been socially engaged due to their specific expertise. See below for an overview per year.

Read all about YAL membership and the members of the Young Academy Leiden.