Light can be used to apply forces on single cells. Focused lasers have been used by physicists to tweeze particles and to manipulate them. These so called “optical tweezers” can be used as mechanical phenotyping tools for characterising the mechanics of materials and living objects.

Cancer is considered the silent pandemic of the 21st century and the second leading cause of death worldwide.

Source: ChemMedChem (2015)

This thesis advance our understanding and the application of molecular catalysts relevant to the reduction of oxygen as well as reduction of nitrite.

In eight chapters, the thesis of Rafaël Vos covers the effect of temperature and pressure on the electrochemical CO2 reduction.

The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the Danstem Institute from the University of Copenhagen and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne have received 300m euros from the Novo Nordisk foundation. The aim of this new international consortium is to bring stem-cell based therapies…

The main goal of the research described in this thesis was the development of new photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT) ruthenium(II) complexes bearing a non-toxic photolabile ligand.

With increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and their detrimental effect on the global climate, modern society needs to push for more renewable energy sources. Storing widely accessible and abundant solar energy in chemical bonds in the form of molecular fuel via artificial photosynthesis…

The electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is an essential half-reaction for the utilization of hydrogen as a sustainable fuel, via the conversion of hydrogen to electrons and protons facilitated by the ORR. In the most common fuel cells, the ORR is requires high loadings of non-abundant platinum…

X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) are the three main methods for solving structures of macromolecules.

With the necessary measures, researchers restart their work in various laboratories. The Leiden Cell Observatory is one of the places where scientists resume their lab work.

Leiden chemists, together with colleagues at the University of York (UK) and Technion (Israel) have discovered a small, sugar-like molecule that maintains the integrity of tissue around a tumour during cancer. This molecule prevents tumour cells from spreading from the primary cancer site to colonise…

Education & outreach

Kidney failure is a serious issue because kidneys cannot regenerate themselves after injury. A possible solution consists of artificially growing healthy kidney tissue. To achieve that, scientists first need to understand kidney development during the earliest stages, in the fetus. Leiden researchers…

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

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

Source: Mol Psychiatry (2015)

Promotor: E. Bouwman, Co-promotor: S. Bonnet

Chemical biology research at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry is aimed at understanding biological processes at the molecular level to strengthen the knowledge base of human health and disease. The approach to achieve this goal is a fundamental chemical one; with the aid of chemical probes biological…

Leiden researchers have found minute movements in the laccase enzyme. This discovery could lead to the development of much more efficient biofuel cells. Publication in Biophysical Journal.

A new mathematical model may explain how body cells get their shapes and what makes them move within a tissue. The model provides fundamental knowledge for applications in tissue engineering, amongst other things. Publication in open-access journal iScience.

Researchers from the Leiden Institute of Chemistry show proof of principle that live-cell structural changes and metabolic processes can be followed in real time with NMR spectroscopy. They performed their study on photosynthetic green algae that are metabolically flexible and can sustain energy generation…

Zebrafish-human communication shows that cancer cells lacking a signaling protein are less able to develop aggressive metastatic properties. This discovery has been made by molecular cell biologist Claudia Tulotta. PhD defence 14 June.

With Sylvestre Bonnet, Jeroen Codée and Remus Dame, the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) will be getting no less than three new professors. Bonnet will become professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry, Codée professor in Organic Chemistry and Dame professor in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry.

Despite the fact that gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are one of the most studied nanoparticles, there is still a necessity for new approaches allowing for effective protective coating to enable wider use of GNPs in biomedical applications.

Source: Mediators Inflamm (2014)

Andreas Bender, Assistant Professor for Medicinal Chemistry in the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the Leiden / Amsterdam Center for Drug Research, received the

Synthesis and application of chemical biology tools to study immunomodulatory signaling lipids.

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

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…

An attractive feature of the MSc Chemistry programme at Leiden University is the great flexibility of the study programme, allowing students to put together a tailor-made programme following their personal interests. Within the limits set by the programme, students can make their own choices and adjust…

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…

Researchers of the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry have made an important discovery about the commonly used anti-cancer drug doxorubicin. They have found a way to reduce its side effects without sacrificing the effectiveness of the medication. This is encouraging…

The Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) is a centre of excellence for multidisciplinary research on drug discovery and development.

On March 27th, 2015 the biannual Dutch Medicinal Chemistry Prize for the best Dutch Ph.D. thesis in the field was awarded to Dr. Dong Guo, a current postdoc researcher in our lab, by the Section of Medicinal Chemistry of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society.

The research described in this thesis focused on the preparation of S/N functionalized carbene ligands and their transition metal complexes, and the exploration of their application as electrocatalysts for proton reduction.

This doctoral thesis is an effort to understand how lipid phase-separation induced by diacylglycerol analogues in lipid-based nanoparticles affects their in vivo behavior, leading to specific nanoparticle-protein communications and selective cell targeting.

The research conducted at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research is clustered within the divisions of BioTherapeutics, Cell Systems and Drug Safety, Medicinal Chemistry and Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy, and the Metabolomics and Analytics Centre.

Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death worldwide, and better models are urgently needed for disease progression studies and drug development.

This thesis has described novel synthetic methods to produce a variety of (glyco)peptides and their application in the study of various immunological processes.

Multicellular giant algae Chara species have been widely used in physiological studies for decades.

PhD defence

Large parts of the research described in this Thesis aims at the development of oligopeptide-masked toxins and their in situ immunoproteasome-mediated activation.