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.

Advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques have revealed how steroid receptors move inside the nucleus. The results were published by a team from Leiden University and the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, led by IBL-researcher Marcel Schaaf.

What are the principles of genome folding and dynamics in bacteria?

In the research programme Drug Discovery & Safety, we are interested in the efficacy and safety of new drugs and novel means to decipher these aspects. Hence, we employ advanced imaging and high-throughput screening techniques next to computational approaches such as chem- and bioinformatics.

Jorrit Rijpma responds in Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant to attention surrounding the reintroduction of border controls in the Schengen area.

Promotor: B. van de Water

Key publications of the Biologics Formulation group

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper

How did Fustat develop between 640 and 750 to become the capital of Egypt? At the time Egypt was a province of the Islamic empire - the caliphate - that had been started by the prophet Muhammad. Original sources used by Arabist Jelle Bruning give new insights into the city. PhD defence on 2 April.

Nature, nurture and neural mechanisms of social emotion regulation in childhood

What is the role of auxin in the initiation and process of somatic embryogenesis?

The European Commission has officially established Euro-BioImaging – which provides life scientists with open access to a broad range of technologies and resources in biological and biomedical imaging – as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). The Cell Observatory in Leiden is part of…

What are the biological and biophysical mechanisms that control chemokine gradient sensing and migration of immune, endothelial, and tumour cells in tumour development?

Dennis Claessen has been appointed professor of Molecular Microbiology at the Institute of Biology Leiden. With his teaching and research on the cell wall, the professor wants to establish applications in the industry and the medical sector.

Promotor: Roeland M.H. Merks

This project aims to assess the risk of spread of antimicrobial resistance genes in the environment derived from currently used synthetic biology approaches in the field of drug discovery.

This thesis describes our search to identify and understand possible regulatory mechanisms of integrin α6β4 in cell-matrix adhesion and intracelular signaling.

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

Sjaak Neefjes, Professor of Chemical Immunology at Leiden University, will receive the NWO Spinoza Prize this year. The Spinoza Committee called Neefjes an ‘exceptional researcher whose intelligence is matched by his boldness’. He will use the 2.5 million euro prize to pursue his research into cancer…

The research conducted at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research is clustered within the divisions of BioTherapeutics, Drug Discovery & Safety and Systems Biomedicine and Pharmacology, and the Metabolomics and Analytics Centre.

PhD Defence

PhD Defence

Alexander Kros studies supramolecular systems in a biological environment. The unifying theme between the projects in my lab is specific molecular recognition, i.e. the intermolecular interaction between complementary molecules with high affinity and selectivity. Studying, imitating and dissecting processes…

Promotores: Prof.dr. H Lenstra, Prof.dr. A Facchini (Padova University)

PhD Defence

Supervisor: Maarten Doornbos

The Aging and Immunity group is led by Dr. Amanda Foks. In this group we aim to investigate how aged immune cells contribute to atherosclerosis and identify novel therapeutic targets and strategies to extend health span and inhibit cardiovascular disease.

The genetic information of all living organisms is contained in their DNA. Cells modify the degree of DNA compaction by epigenetics, which largely determines what genes are read out and which genes are transcriptionally silent.

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink Co-promotor: Dr. B.E. Snaar

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

Research at the MCBIM group is comprised of the following research themes:

The central theme of Rik Mom’s research group is to identify what the electrode-electrolyte interface looks like when electrocatalysis is taking place. Using specialized forms of Raman and X-ray spectroscopy, we study the chemical state and bonding environment of the electrode surface and near-surface…

Chromatin is an ubiquitous protein-DNA complex that forms the structural basis of DNA condensation in all eukaryotic organisms.

Promotor: Prof.dr. C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel, Dr. ir. V. Meyer, Co-promotor: Dr. A.F.J. Ram

The transition from single cells to multicellular organisms was a key step in evolution. Researchers from Leiden and Amsterdam developed a mathematical model that explains how this transition may have come about. They suspect cooperating cells may correct each other’s mistakes. Publication in eLife…

Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have managed to culture human heart muscle cells on a massive scale. This is an exceptional achievement because it is very difficult to replicate heart muscle cells outside the body. Using a special technique, the researchers have now created…

Stem cells, Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? The Niko Tinbergen lecture 2019 was delivered by Hans Clevers. Before the main lecture, Ariane Briegel and Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes told the audience about their fields of research in two shorter lectures.

Publication by: Amanda Foks, Gijs van Puijvelde, Jolien Wolbert, Mara Kröner, Vanessa Frodermann, Thomas van der Heijden, Peter van Santbrink, Louis Boon, Ilze Bot and Johan Kuiper. Cardiovascular Research. 2016;111(3):252-261.

Researchers and clinicians at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) are about to begin a milestone clinical study. It will be the first time a stem cell gene therapy developed in the Netherlands is used in a clinic. The therapy will be used to treat children with SCID, a rare disorder where children…

Our focus is to optimize the fungal cell wall to both increase chitin production and chitin extractability.

Currently, several successful vaccines are available. However, for pathogens with a highly variable genetic composition, and for which serum IgG antibodies are not a useful correlate of protection, effective vaccines are yet to be developed.

In this project, we aim to obtain a quantitative understanding of the role of the immune system in tumor regression, of the role of tumor cell heterogeneity in cancer growth and of tumor cell migration properties.

Leiden and Austrian researchers have succeeded in further uncovering how a plant cell passes on the growth hormone auxin in a directional manner to the next cell. Three proteins that cling together in a bunch appear to be essential for this important transport process. ‘This discovery solves a crucial…