This thesis tackles the urgent challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through the design of novel antibacterial agents.

Members of our research team give different types of presentations and lectures.

PhD defence

SAILS (Society, Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences) is a universitywide initiative aimed at facilitating collaboration across disciplines on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is one of Leiden University's interdisciplinary programmes.

Cell-based medicinal products (CBMPs) show great promise when it comes to the treatment of genetic disorders. However, there is limited knowledge about CBMP stability during their production, storage, and administration to patients. The main focus of my research is the characterization of CBMPs using…

Cationic peptide amphiphile nanoparticles are employed for co-delivery of immune modulator CpG and antigen. This results in better targeting to the antigen presenting cells and eliciting strong Th1 response, which is effective against the intracellular pathogens.

A very large part of intravenously administered nanoparticles are cleared through the liver. Within the liver, most nanoparticles are thought to be sequestered by macrophages (Kupffer cells). To achieve effective cell-specific targeting of drugs and non-viral gene delivery vectors, improved mechanistic…

The Biomedical Microscale Analytics group is led by Dr. Rawi Ramautar. In present-day metabolomics, and bioanalysis in general, the analytical toolbox used encounters difficulties for the analysis of limited amounts of biological samples. As a result, a significant number of crucial biomedical/clinical…

How do pathogenic mycobacteria alter lipid metabolism in human cells and patients, and which disrupted pathways could be targeted for new antibiotics?

The research master's specialisation Clinical and Health Psychology consists of five main parts: the general courses, the track-specific courses, the elective courses, a research internship and a thesis.

Metabolomicshas emerged as an important discipline to study molecular and cellular processes in living cells and organisms with the ultimate aim to obtain an answer to a given biological/clinical question.

Research at the SBC group is comprised of the following research themes:

Promotor: J.G.E.M. Fraaije, Co-Promotor: A. Kros

Where did species survive the cold cycles of the current Ice Age?

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Co-promotor: Dr. Theo Reijmers

Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria - South Africa

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

This work has described synthetic strategies towards well-defined structures resembling capsular polysaccharide (CPS) fragments, CPS mimics, teichoic acid (TA) fragments as well as a third-generation ring-closing tandem metathesis (RCM) linker to better exploit the potential of automated synthesis.

Does Artifical Light at Night (ALAN) disrupt seasonal physiological and behavioral patterns in migrating freshwater fish?

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Co-Promotor: R.J. Vreeken

Marine sponges are important members of reef ecosystems, as they play ecological roles that are essential for the health of the reef.

Due to their central physiological roles in living organisms, retaining beta-glycosidases have been the subject of tremendous research efforts to examine their structure/function relation using numerous biophysical and biochemical approaches.

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

Neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease (PD), are increasing in prevalence due to the aging population. Despite extensive study, these diseases are still not fully understood and the lack of personalised treatment options that can target the cause of the diseases, rather than the symptoms,…

Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are the most abundant biological entity in nature. They shape bacterial communities and are a major driving force in bacterial evolution.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a major health threat. Addressing this challenge requires among others the development of new antibacterial compounds. The research described in this thesis focuses on discovering novel antibiotics from soil bacteria, specifically Streptomyces and Paenibacillus.Despite…

Advanced mass spectrometry of glycosphingolipids takes the central stage in this thesis. Investigations focus on characterization of glycosphingolipid metabolism in health and disease with emphasis to the detection and accurate quantitation of known and so far unknown glycosphingolipids and closely…

Biotherapeutics or biologics, such as proteins, peptides, and nucleic acids, comprise an increasing share of the pharmaceutical market, whilst offering new therapies for difficult-to-treat diseases. Most notable is their contribution to the vaccination efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. In most cases,…

School of pharmaceutical sciences, University of Geneva - Switzerland

The recently introduced nature-originated deep eutectic solvents, so-called natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) are considered as truly green solvents, which composed of natural ingredients found abundantly in organisms.

The Biological- and Soft-Matter Physics specialisation is an excellent preparation for pursuing a PhD degree in physics.

Glycoside hydrolases (glycosidases/GHs) are widely abundant enzymes in all kingdoms of life and are important biocatalysts that catalyze the hydrolysis of glycosidic linkages in oligo/polysaccharides, glycoproteins and glycolipids with tremendous efficiency

The goal of target discovery is to identify and validate proteins and biological pathways that are involved in the disease process. Modulating these target proteins and pathways with small molecules, therapeutic proteins or other biomolecules (e.g. mRNA) could deliver an effective and safe drug or v…

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

This thesis describes the evaluation of novel natural products with antibacterial activity enabled by total chemical synthesis.

Liposomes hold great promise for peptide-based personalized cancer vaccination, especially when administered intradermally. However, current liposome preparation methods are very time consuming (resulting in long development times per formulation), whereas personalized cancer vaccination requires very…

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the pathogen causing tuberculosis (TB), is the leader among all pathogens responsible for the most human deaths today and it is considered as one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. There is an increasing occurrence of multidrug-resistant and even totally drug-resistant…

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global health problem caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). In 2015, there were estimated to be 10.4 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths ascribed to TB, making it one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. Unfortunately, the only current registered…

Source: The AAPS journal, Volume 16, Issue 4, pp. 681-684 (2014)

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease which is spreaded through the air. It is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and it led 1.7 million people to death in 2016. This mortarlity rate is concentrated in developing countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, and South Africa. These numbers make…

The surface and the edges of graphene are expected to provide higher sensitivity and specificity in detecting and characterizing single molecules. However fundamental physical limits exist in reaching an ultimate precision in detecting the dynamics of chemical and biological systems. The research in…

When we are in a conversation, how do we know exactly when to respond, and how do we manage to respond so swiftly, yet without interrupting our interlocutors? Can speech melody – in particular utterance final “boundary tones” – help us determine who will speak next, or are these cues too late in the…

This project employs a systematic experimental approach to examine the interaction of these two hitherto independent lines of research (tone sandhi and focus realization) in six dialects of Chinese, which lie on a continuum between dialects with dense tonal distributions and sparser distributions. In…

This week has seen the publication of the Research Handbook on Cross-border Bank Resolution.

Key publications of the Medical Systems Biophysics and Bioengineeringgroup (Mashaghi Lab)

This project investigates which aspects of social media content adolescents attend to and how these relate to their credibility judgments, aiming to systematically understand their susceptibility to misinformation and inform effective educational programs that foster youth’s resilience to misinforma…

Cooperation on education with China stimulates innovation and brings a different perspective and new content to classrooms.

An overview of all special issues published by The Hague Journal of Diplomacy.

PhD defence

LED3 is the combined effort of four 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 institutes.