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…

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…

While colloidal aggregates are often undesirable due to their random shapes, we exploit them as a starting point to synthesize patchy particles.

How do protein modifications work together to repair DNA, and what can we learn about these interactions to better understand disease?

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…

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)

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 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.

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.

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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…

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

You don't only work at the university, but at home too. This hybrid approach to work presents various challenges. Here you can find tips and tricks to help you work at home and at the university in a pleasant and responsible manner.

Quantum computing is a novel paradigm for computation, which is nearing real-world impact with the coming generation of limited, but nonetheless powerful quantum devices.

After this course

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.

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.

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…

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.

Professor Thomas Hankemeier and his international research team HYPERMARKER have received a 10m-euro grant from Horizon Europe and UK Research and Innovation.

In April, the X-omics initiative was granted 17 million euros from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research. The subsidy is part of the National Roadmap for large-scale scientific infrastructure, intended to build or renew large-scale research facilities. What new insights will this investment…

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.

The discovery of new medicines is a tedious and lengthy process. On average, over 10,000 molecules need to be studied for one to become a drug and reach the patient. Part of that process are the very costly clinical trials in humans, and candidate drugs often fail due to side effects or lack of efficacy.…

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

Supervisor: Xue Yang

About nine million people worldwide contract tuberculosis each year. Research into new treatment for this disease has received fresh stimulus with more efficient techniques and a new understanding of how the tuberculosis bacteria works.

We aim to gain a better understanding of the natural disease progression of ALS in order to improve clinical trial design and analysis and to support drug discovery and clinical development of new drugs.