Heart failure is a major health care problem with high mortality.

How can the development of constrictions in the blood vessels be reversed?

Development & Disease is one of the four research themes of the Institute of Biology Leiden.

Lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs) are a group of orphan diseases characterized by lysosomal dysfunction or impaired lysosomal catabolism and affect collectively about 1 in 5000 live births.

Bone research provides plenty of detailed data about the health of a person or a group. This data is not only used to reconstruct the past but also to fight disease today.

Inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can severely impact both the physical and social aspect of a patient’s life. Aberrant inflammatory responses are thought to be a major causative factor in these disorders, but an abundance of different factors contribute to the development…

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Development & Disease research theme include the mechanisms and evolution of embryonic development, the development of cognitive mechanisms, and animal models for understanding mechanisms of human disease.

This thesis describes biochemical investigations of glucocerebrosidase (GBA), the lysosomal β- glucosidase that is deficient in Gaucher disease (GD).

Microbial Sciences'contribution to the Development & Disease research theme is to perform world-class research to understand cellular morphogenesis, growth, development and virulence of microbes.

Plant Sciences' contribution to the Development & Disease research theme is to unravel the processes that allow plants to adapt to changing abiotic and biotic environmental conditions or stresses, with the aim to contribute to the sustainable production of food, flowers and bio-based products using…

Promotor: J. van der Greef; Co-promotor: E. van Wijk, M. Wang

How can we develop new chemical biology tools and approaches to understand and interfere with glucosylceramide metabolism in relation to Gaucher disease?

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most frequent neurodegenerative disorder and the primary cause of dementia. The neuropathological features of AD include the occurrence of senile plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, decreased synaptic density, and loss of neurons. An obstacle in the study and treatment…

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

Focus in skin research

LUMC researchers are looking for factors that point to illness at an early stage.

LUMC researchers are looking for factors that point to illness at an early stage.

Promotor: J. Kuiper

Due to the developments around the corona virus, the Translational Summer School on Neuromuscular Diseases is postponed to 2021.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. The most important risk factor for developing this disease is high cholesterol levels in the blood.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper

A new research line is the development of liquid biopsy fingerprints to predict early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) stage in human in readily accessible body fluids in human (in collaboration with: Dr. Geert-Jan Groeneveld, CHDR; Prof. Elga de Vries, Free University Medical Center; and others).

How are the epidermal lipid pathways involved in health and disease.

Promotor: J. van der Greef, T. Hankemeier; Co-promotor: H.A. van Wietmarschen

The overall objective of this project is to identify novel drug candidates that are capable of slowing down the progression of neurodegeneration in the subset of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with overt mitochondrial dysfunction. Multimodal phenotypic characterisation of cohorts of monogenic PD…

How to identify patients at risk of developing devastating, metastatic disease and facilitate the development of personalised treatment for prostate cancer patients?

Promotor: H.J.M. de Groot, Co-Promotor: A. Alia

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

PhD Defence

We know this, but we don’t act on it: eat healthily, move more, address our stress levels and sleep well. Internist and Professor of Diabetology Hanno Pijl is fascinated by the effect that a healthy lifestyle can have on health. He researches how this lifestyle is achievable and satisfying, for patients…

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Prof. dr. A.H. Meijer

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.

Health workers have always sought ways to fight disease in vulnerable groups in the population. It is now clear that such research also benefits more prosperous countries. African worm infections and innovative thermometers have shown Leiden researchers how to fight diseases of affluence and keep health…

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

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…

PhD Defence

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.

Promotores: H.A. Udo De Haes, P.M. Brakefield

Overkleeft

How does the endocannabinoid system in the zebrafish function at the molecular and phenotypic levels and how is it linked to the stress axis?

Can we build a biosensor to detect neuroblastoma markers in urine using the chemotaxis system in E. coli?

Unraveling the immune-suppressive actions of drugs like prednisone.

A novel in vivo model system for studies on glucocorticoid resistance

Researchers from Leiden University will develop a new approach to study the biomarkers of Alzeimer’s disease. This approach focusses on the molecular messengers of the cells. The project, led by Thomas Hankemeier and coordinated by Yuliya Shakalisava (Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, LACDR),…

Researchers from the Institute of Biology Leiden have discovered how good intestinal bacteria regulate our innate immune system. This surprising discovery could make it possible to treat diseases related to inflammation, such as diabetes and colitis, with a cocktail of good bacteria. Publication in…

The changes that humans are making to the landscape are beneficial for mosquitoes that spread diseases such as Zika, chikungunya and dengue. This is what biologist Maarten Schrama and his colleagues write in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. ‘If we know in which living environments mosquitoes thrive…

Can we bring novel treatment options to the clinic for UM patients with liver metastases?

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…