On this page you will find an overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2023, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

There are many complex links in the chain that provides patients with new drugs: from fundamental science, to clinical tests, to production. The entire chain can be found in Leiden. Leiden University, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the businesses at the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP)…

Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP, also termed chemical proteomics), is one of the pillars of chemical biology, and at LED3 we have taken it to the next level. ABPP allows the assessment of protein function in live cells and tissues, which means that the activity of a complete protein family can…

In the search for new medicines against diseases such as cancer, a Leiden team has developed a new workflow. This approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) with molecular modelling and is suitable for finding unknown and innovative drug structures, the researchers proved.

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…

What’s the right dosage of medication for children? Assistant professor Elke Krekels and her colleagues discovered that for some medicines, you can determine this quite simply. On 13 April Krekels received the TOP-Publication award during the annual spring meeting of the Dutch Society for Clinical Pharmacology…

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

On January 11, 2025, our esteemed colleague and emeritus professor Arne van der Gen passed away. Arne was a professor of Organic Chemistry from 1980 until his retirement in 2000, and was a great advocate of the integration and harmonization of European education in chemistry. Arne was 90 years old.

The National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Facilities programme of NWO enables the building or renovation of research facilities with international allure. Leiden NMR groups take part in the uNMR-NL consortium coordinated by Marc Baldus (Utrecht University) that has been awarded almost 18 million…

Thanks in part to the persistence of a Leiden research group, cancer could be detected in the near future with just a single drop of blood. Not only can the diagnosis be determined at an earlier stage, but the blood test is also cheap, fast and patient friendly. The first results of this method seem…

On 23 April 2021, Professor Alfred Vertegaal from the Department of Cell and Chemical Biology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) delivered his inaugural lecture ‘Unraveling and exploiting cellular communication codes’. Vertegaal used the opportunity to describe how research in the field…

The European Union has invested ten million euros in the so-called iNEXT-Discovery consortium. The goal of this new consortium is to enable European researchers to extend innovative structural biology research. The Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) is also part of iNEXT-Disovery, which…

At high doses, drug candidate BIA 10-2474 binds not only to the protein that it targets, but to other proteins as well. It thus deactivates proteins that are involved in the metabolism of nerve cells. This is what an international group of researchers from Leiden University and Erasmus MC, among others,…

Lecture, Studium Generale

Lecture

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2020, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

The receptor nomenclature committee of IUPHAR, the International Union of Pharmacology, has several subgroups. Among these are a few that our division is involved in, those for adenosine, nicotinic acid, and GnRH receptors.

The work done by SUMO proteins in the cells of our body is of vital importance. Molecular cell biologist Alfred Vertegaal has been studying these proteins for nine years, first with a Veni subsidy and then with a prestigious Vidi subsidy.

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected five Leiden professors from different disciplines as new members. Two of the new members are women.

Leiden chemists have developed a new technique with which they can determine the role of kinases – a group of proteins – in a living cell. This technique makes it easier to find new drug targets for diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The team published the findings in the journal Nature…

Although sugars are widely used in biological and medical research, their synthesis is still badly understood. Jeroen Codée has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros for systematically studying the production of sugars. ‘I want to genuinely understand the reactions.’

Leiden chemists discovered a new mechanism which might explain how multiple sclerosis shifts to a more severe form. Their findings contribute to unravelling the mysterious course of the disease. They have published their findings in the journal Biochemistry.

PhD defence

Lecture

Lecture

Lecture

Lecture

Lecture

Three projects with Leiden researchers are to receive a subsidy from NWO for the construction or renovation of large-scale research facilities. They will be working on electron microscopy, an X-omics initiative and an X-ray telescope. The projects are part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific…

Lecture

PhD defence

Lecture

Conference

PhD defence

Lecture

Conference

In 2020, many of our staff and students have again won prestigious prizes and been awarded important research subsidies.

The Joan van der Waals colloquium is an ongoing bi-weekly lecture series.