In the Master’s programme in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences of Leiden University you are trained for a scientific career in drug research and development.

Adenosine is an endogenous ligand which exerts its action by activating adenosine receptors (ARs), while its circulating levels are controlled via a variety of mechanism and proteins, amongst others the equilibrative nucleoside transporters (ENTs).

The focus of the Antiviral Pharmacology group led by Anne-Grete Märtson is optimizing antiviral therapy for different viral infections by conducting clinical trials and using innovative computational and dynamic laboratory methodologies.

In the Master’s programme in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences of Leiden University you are trained for a scientific career in drug research and development.

Clearance is the most important pharmacokinetic parameter for drug dose selection. Pharmacokinetic information is typically first available in the adult population, and in general only limited pharmacokinetic data are available in children when drugs enter into the market. It is therefore of the utmost…

The Pharmacy research group focusses on the development of predictive models to improve clinical drug efficacy and safety. We work on clinical problems that require further mechanistic understanding and strive for ultimate benefit to patients.

In this thesis, the discovery and optimization is described of chemical tools to study the N-acylethanolamine (NAE) biosynthetic pathway.

Prediction of human (CNS) target site concentrations in health and disease In the vision of Prof. de Lange we will only be able to predict human (central nervous system, CNS) target site concentrations and effects if we perform systematic, condition-dependent, integrative, and strictly quantitative…

The Chemical Probe Facility is part of the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development (LED3) center. Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) is one of the pillars of chemical biology. ABPP determines the activity of entire protein families in living cells and tissues under physiological conditions, such…

Laura Heitman of the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) has been nominated for the Prix Galien Research Award. This important pharmaceutical prize honors young, prominent researchers whose scientific research is of great importance for fundamental or clinical drug research.

As of 1 November, Laura Heitman has been appointed full Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR). Heitman has been working on the understanding and improvement of drug-receptor interactions in early drug discovery. ‘My ultimate aim is to make medicines…

Supervisor: Andrea Martella

Less than 1 in 10 drug candidates that enter phase 1 clinical trials actually gets approved for human use.

An important hormone excreting gland in the human body is the pituitary

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.P. IJzerman, Co-Promotor: L.H. Heitman

The aim of this project is to explore the use of statistical interaction models to quantify cross-omics and omics-drug interactions in large-scale clinical and experimental datasets

The research area of this division is focused on the development of novel therapeutic modalities and novel concepts in early drug discovery, in order to better predict ligand-target interactions.

Despite being the second largest transmembrane protein family after GPCRs, the SLC superfamily has only gained significant attention in early drug development over the past decade.

Source: J Med Chem, Volume 57, Issue 8, pp. 3213-22 (2014)

The need for novel drugs as well as innovations in their development and application is as urgent as ever. Below we present our vision , mission, and our key research areas.

Meet the scientists within the LED3 community

Fungal infections pose a significant threat to individuals with compromised immune systems and despite advancements in diagnosis and treatment, they continue to jeopardize patient’s health.

Promotores: B. van de Water; P. Hogendoorn; J. Bovée Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

After graduation you have a lot of opportunities: academics are highly sought after in Dutch secondary education or mbo teaching. You can also aim for a management position or work as a researcher within the field of Life Sciences.

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

Chemical-induced organ toxicity is a major concern in the development and use of chemicals, including drugs, pesticides, industrial chemicals and cosmetics. In the last decades, the onset and progression of chemical-induced organ toxicity has been linked amongst others to perturbation of mitochondri…

The Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy (SPP) aims to develop precision medicine approaches to characterize and predict variation in treatment response and enhance translational drug development strategies.

Are you looking for a research project?

Cell adhesion signaling

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is one of the main reasons for drug attrition during pre-clinical and clinical phases of drug development as well as for drug withdrawal post-marketing.

To improve treatment of breast cancer patients it is important to understand all stages of breast cancer from initiation to in situ disease and progression to invasive disease. In this thesis we use intraductal injections of patient derived tissue to model ductal carcinoma in situ and invasive breast…

The Repository from the Drug Disease Model Resources (DDMoRe) consortium provides a home to a collection of computational models of disease and drug action that have been used in pharmaceutical and/or academic research. This publically available open-access resource will make it easier for researchers…

Molecular Physiology is a research group at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry dedicated to the design, synthesis and application of chemical tools to study important biological and biomedical questions. The group is headed by Prof. Dr. Mario van der Stelt and includes the research lines of Assistant…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Science with University of California.

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

The Novel chemical modalities research group is headed by Assistant Professor Sebastian Pomplun. Sebastian started at the division of Medicinal Chemistry within the LACDR in September 2021. His lab develops technologies for the discovery of novel chemical modalities that can address challenging drug…

Accurate prediction of the unbound drug concentration-time profile at the CNS target site is crucial for the assessment of the right drug concentration-effect relationship. PBPK models have supported the PK prediction of the CNS target sites and the translation of PK data between species and between…

Steffen Brünle's group investigates G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). These essential membrane proteins are prime targets for therapeutic drug development in disease and cancer treatment.

In this PhD thesis, available data on the PK and/or PD of different targeted therapies, chemotherapy and immunotherapies obtained during both routine clinical practice and prospective clinical studies were analyzed.

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.

Pharmacist-clinical pharmacologist Robert Rissmann has been appointed Professor of Translational Dermatology. This extraordinary professorship has been created jointly by the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) and the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) to strengthen their partnership…

Promotor: B. vd Water, T. Schmidt, Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

While bioinformatics methods deal with the analysis of sequence information (be it proteins or DNA), the field of cheminformatics is concerned with the analysis of small-molecule datasets.

Three Leiden researchers have been awarded a Vici grant by the Dutch Research Council. The funding of up to 1.5 million euros supports ‘talented, adventurous and pioneering researchers’. A total of 39 projects at Dutch institutions will receive a grant.

How do humanitarian organisations adapt cyber incidents to their specific priorities and needs, and how can they adapt strategies of other organisations?

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

Speeches and speech acts have been crucial in settling the question at the centre of every political debate: who gets what, when and where?

To safeguard the quality of research within Leiden University, a committee of external experts evaluates the University’s institutes once every six years according to the Standard Evaluation Protocol which is drawn up by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), The Royal Netherlands…