Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most pressing challenges that humanity faces in the coming decades.

In this thesis, the researcher developed a nanosystem based on the metallophilic Interaction between cyclometalated complexes.

For effective cancer immunotherapy by vaccination, co-delivery of tumour antigens and adjuvants to dendritic cells and subsequent activation of antigen-specific cytotoxic T cells (CTLs) is crucial. In this study, a synthetic long peptide (SLP) harbouring the model CTL epitope SIINFEKL was encapsulated…

How does an embryonic stem cell decide if it becomes a heart cell or a kidney cell? That’s the question computational biologist Maria Mircea studied for her PhD research. She looked at the inside of individual cells to analyse how they change. This is what she discovered.

Thread-like bacteria make cells that no longer have a cell wall under the influence of osmotic stress. A remarkable discovery, since the cell wall serves as a protection barrier for bacteria. It could also help to explain how pathogenic bacteria can hide in our body from our immune system. A team of…

Education & outreach

Decentralized plug and play systems for energy production are the future picture of our society. Artificial photosynthetic systems are used for this purpose.

Sander van Kasteren (Professor of Molecular Immunology) makes the invisible visible. He will explain more in his inaugural lecture.

Leiden chemist Roxanne Kieltyka is part of the 2018 Talented 12 list of the American Chemical Society. That was announced by the journal Chemical & Engineering News on 19 August.

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)

The LUMC has become the first institution in the Netherlands to treat a patient with an autoimmune disease using CAR T-cell therapy.

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

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

A bacterium hiding from the immune system and picking up bits of DNA from its environment. The result: gaining new traits, such as better protection against antibiotics. Fortunately, we have not found such a damning scenario yet. However, PhD student Renée Kapteijn did find the first clues, which…

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…

Roxanne Kieltyka was interviewed for NRC and talks about squaramides, cell cultures and Goldilocks.

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.

The challenge is considerable, but so is the satisfaction when it succeeds: creating complex sugar molecules that play a role in biology.

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…

Before researchers can develop targeted drugs, they need to know exactly how a disease works. Biochemist Bert Beerkens created molecules that allow them to find out. He used caffeine as the basis for new molecules that enable research into certain receptor proteins on cells.

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

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

Source: Mol Psychiatry (2015)

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…

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

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.

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…

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.

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…

Mechanics play a larger role in blood vessel formation, and other developmental biology, than previously thought. Cells appear to respond to mechanical signals, such as pressure. Through the extracellular matrix, a network of fibrous proteins, cells can supposedly exchange those mechanical signals over…

Source: Mediators Inflamm (2014)

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.

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.

The life of a fibroblast is heavy, but PhD student Julia Eckert makes it 19.5 times heavier, using the Large Diameter Centrifuge at the ESTEC space research centre in Noordwijk.

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 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…

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