Global healthcare is on the verge of an antibiotic availability crisis as bacteria have evolved resistance to nearly all known antibacterials. Identifying new antibiotics that operate via novel modes-of-action is therefore of high priority.

Promotor: M. Danhof, Co-promotores: J. Freijer, A. Yassen

Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

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.

Sugar excipients, needed to stabilize medicines, can be unsafe for patients due to an impurity discovered recently by Daniel Weinbuch. ‘The biopharmaceutical industry should now consider new excipient quality criteria for safer drug development,’ he says. PhD defence on 13 December.

On the 6th of March 2023, Santino Regilme presented his work-in-progress titled 'Global Drug Wars: Contested Normative Orders of Peace, Security, and Human Rights'. If the battle against illegal drugs is construed as a war, how is victory in such a war defined and constructed? If the oppositional…

Do medicines arrive in the right amount at the right spot in our brain? By making a model that depicts our brain in small 'brain blocks', Esmée Vendel tries to find an answer to this question. Her new, mathematical model predicts the concentration of medicines in the brain over time and space. Vendel…

It takes years to develop new medicines, from the test tube to trials in humans. During the process it often happens that a drug that seems promising in the initial stage has to be dropped in a later phase. This costs time and money. Leiden University and the LUMC are working closely together to make…

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subtype of breast cancer characterized by limited treatment options and unfavorable clinical outcomes. Therefore, the research described in this thesis focused on the exploration of novel targeted therapies for TNBC.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. A. Bouwstra, Prof.dr. W. Jiskoot

As of April 1, 2018, Erik Danen has been appointed as Professor of Cancer drug target discovery at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR). His discipline is cell biology of cancer, in which he focuses on the mechanisms underlying metastasis and therapy resistance.

Triplet superconductivity refers to a condensate of equal-spin Cooper pairs (pairs of electrons with equal spin).

The aim of this work was to study the applicability of antigen-coated pH-sensitive microneedle arrays for effective vaccination strategies. Therefore, a model antigen (ovalbumin) was coated onto pH-sensitive (pyridine-modified) microneedle arrays to test pH-triggered antigen release by applying the…

The intradermal administration route is attractive for vaccine delivery, because of the highly populated antigen-presenting cells in the skin. However, the skin’s main physical barrier, the stratum corneum, prevents vaccines from entering the skin.

This thesis tackles the difficulty of predicting the liver’s clinical response to novel therapies, a challenge arising from interspecies differences and limitations of existing in vitro models.

International pharmaceuticals company Grünenthal is to open an innovation hub on the Leiden Bio Science Park. The hub will make it easier for scientists and drug developers to work together.

Promotor: B. van de Water

In this project, researchers from computer science, law, psychology, and public administration research in practice how artificial intelligence (AI) can be leveraged to make decision-making in the security domain more effective, while also keeping it safe and accountable.

In this thesis population pharmacokinetic and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) approaches were applied to investigate the influence of glomerular filtration (GF) and active tubular secretion (ATS) on renal clearance in children.

Solute carrier (SLC) transporters are a large and diverse class of relatively understudied transmembrane proteins.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) constitutes a small subtype (~15%) of breast cancer, but causes the majority of breast cancer-related deaths.

Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

Promotores: A.P. IJzerman, H.W.T. van Vlijmen

The cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2R) is associated with several inflammatory diseases with an unmet medical need (e.g. Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, reumatoid arthritis). Development of new chemical biology strategies to study this protein is essential to aid future development of drugs for these…

The Delivery of Biotherapeutics research group is led by Prof. Matthias Barz and focusses on the synthesis and characterization of polypept(o)ids and their application in nanomedicine to improve existing therapies or enable novel diagnostic or therapeutic approaches.

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, , Co-Promotor: Young Hae Choi

Effective policy-making requires understanding what truly causes a problem. Only then can policymakers develop targeted interventions that achieve desired outcomes.

The research in the Biosyn group is focused on the design, synthesis and function of the four major types of biomolecules: nucleic acids, carbohydrates, peptides and lipids and hybrid structures thereof. These biomolecules and their derivatives are used in drug discovery and chemical biology, to develop…

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

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

Conference

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

There are millions of gene clusters that encode the biosynthesis of bioactive natural products, with the vast majority yet unknown. How can we prioritize them to discover new chemical space for antibiotics? For this we will set up a pipeline based on federated learning (AI), synthetic biology and bioactivity…

Chemotherapy that does not harm the body, but effectively fights cancer cells: that is the goal of chemist Sylvestre Bonnet and his team. During his PhD research, chemist Xuequan Zhou brought that goal a little closer. He developed molecules that, upon injection in the bloodstream, self-assemble into…

Rosan Kuin started her PhD in July at the LACDR under supervision of prof. Gerard van Westen and Dr. Meindert Lamers. She completed a BSc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the VU University in Amsterdam in 2017. After that she started two master programs, Drug Discovery & Safety with a specialization in…

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…

This thesis describes the design, characterization and application of dextran based crosslinked network.

As leading cause of death worldwide, cancer is responsible for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020 according to World Health Organization (WHO). Cisplatin and its derivatives are commonly used chemotherapy agents for current cancer treatment in the clinics.

Cardiovascular diseases are among the most frequent causes of death in the world. The main underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases is the development of atherosclerosis in the medium and large-sized arteries.

This thesis explored the molecular pharmacological mechanisms of targeting CB2R via investigation of novel drug discovery concepts such as target binding kinetics, allosteric modulation and biased signaling.

Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

Metal-containing molecules combine geometrical features and a reactivity that are inherently different from that of organic molecules. My research focuses on light-activatable metal-based anticancer drugs and metal-functionalized liposomes. Light is a very selective way to activate photosensitive drugs…

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Memelink

PURPOSE: To determine the effect of elasticity on the skin permeation of ketoprofen from surfactant-based vesicular formulations and elastic liposomes.