Strengthening a cancer patient's own immune system so that the body itself can better destroy cancer cells. This is at the heart of immunotherapy, the most promising progress in cancer treatment in recent years. In order to drive this development further, the Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van…

How can zebrafish research help understanding human diseases?

A month ago it was Marc Baggelaar, and now Hans Kistemaker too has obtained his PhD cum laude at the Leiden Institute for Chemistry (LIC). ‘He has made ground-breaking contributions to the world of protein modification,’ says PhD supervisor Gijs van der Marel. Kistemaker obtained his PhD on 11 May…

The Leiden Institute of Physics has been awarded three out of twelve available grants from the FOM Projectruimte. Principal Investigators Milan Allan, Stefan Semrau and Carlo Beenakker all receive around 400,000 euro for their research.

The NEASQC project brings together academic experts and industrial end-users to investigate and develop a new breed of Quantum-enabled applications that can take advantage of NISQ (Noise Intermediate-Scale Quantum) systems in the near future. NEASQC is use-case driven, addressing practical problems…

Science, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR)

Methods of treatment for chronic illnesses are limited. Doctors and researchers at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Leiden University are working on new therapies as an alternative for organ transplants. The goal is to cure the illnesses by restoring organs to their original function. Stem…

Mathematical biologists from Leiden have developed a model that helps to explain how the spine and vertebrae, among other things, form during embryonic development. The same process, the other way around, plays a key role in cancer metastasis. Publication in iScience.

Chemotherapy that does nothing until you irradiate it with light. Sylvestre Bonnet receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros for the development of this treatment. The Leiden chemist wants to build a new molecule to fight tumours that are at the time still difficult to treat.

Leiden has a long history in the treatment of blood cell cancer. Research to find better therapies never stands still. One of the potential treatments currently being worked on is a ‘living medicine’.

The DASPO-group for data analysis and survival in personalized sarcoma at the Mathematical Institute has developed an app that provides personalised predictions for patients suffering from soft tissue sarcomas. Due to the aggressive nature of such tumors, the prognosis for such patients is poor, even…

How can new compounds relieve cancer patients of severe side effects?

Treatment and care for cancer patients is becoming increasingly advanced. For example, surgeons can now perform operations with much greater precision, and therapeutic vaccines are being developed to prompt the patient’s immune system to fight cancer. Work is also being done on better early diagnostics,…

Promotores: Prof.dr. P.C.W. Hogendoorn & Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Dr. B.E. Snaar-Jagalska

Lecture, This Week's Discoveries

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Researchers at Leiden University have demonstrated that tumours can apply mechanical means to attract the blood vessels they need to be able to grow. The team published this discovery on 2 March in Nature Scientific Reports.

In this research group, headed by Laura Heitman, novel receptor concepts in drug discovery are studied, aiming to increase the effectivity of medicines. Many drugs act via so-called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and therefore our research is mainly focused on understanding and improving drug-receptor…

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Medical Delta has appointed seven professors who will bridge the medical worlds of Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam.

Is it possible to successfully design self-assembling nano-scale protein skeletons for use as a vaccine platform?

How can we find novel natural products from Actinomycetes that act as growth modulators on mammalian cells? Can we harvest and develop the potential of these novel compounds for industrial and medical biotechnology?

How does the extracellular matrix coordinate endothelial cell behavior during angiogenesis, and how do metabolic waste-products and matrix-degrading enzymes produced by the tumour modify the extracellular matrix so as the change the cellular coordination?

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This week, the Dutch Cancer Foundation (KWF) has awarded two research grants to LUMC researchers that include the development of advanced AI technology to improve and personalize oncological treatment.

Anja Rüten-Budde is our Mathematical Institute’s nominee for the C.J. Kok Jury Award 2020.

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More and more medicines are becoming available that target a tumour’s specific traits. The use of chemotherapy is continually undergoing improvement.

Theoretical physicist Luca Giomi receives a 2 million euro ERC Consolidator Grant for research into flowing cells in a strange hexatic phase, which is half fluid, half solid.

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What is the most effective way to eliminate tumour cells? The DNA repair mechanism could play an important role in increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy in the fight against cancerous cells. If we are to influence this mechanism, we need fundamental knowledge about how the mechanism works.

Intrigued by the way cells autonomously regulate their fate, we strive to understand and visualize cellular processes as the basis of Cell Signaling.

We are interested in understanding the mechanics of soft materials, of which biological materials are prominent examples.

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Leiden University was founded in 1575, thanks to William of Orange. According to tradition, he founded the University to reward the citizens of Leiden for their resistance to the Spanish occupiers.

The master's specialisation Drug Discovery and Safety at Leiden University provides students with research-oriented education into the discovery of new drug targets and new lead molecules, particularly in the field of cancer, through a combination of advanced imaging techniques (‘systems microscopy’),…

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