The main objective of this thesis was to develop clinically relevant survival models for patients with high-grade soft tissue sarcoma of the extremities, in particular the development and validation of prediction models for use in clinical practice.

With an ageing population it is becoming increasingly important to find means to repair cells, tissue and organs through regenerative medicine.

The Faculty of Medicine

PhD Defence

Patients with the same illness often receive the same treatment, even if the cause of the illness is different for each person. This represents a new step towards ultimately being able to offer every patient more personalised treatment.

Getting personal

Assessing and implementing new diagnostics strategies for stratifying patients

Can we establish a new quality control system for herbal medicines that is based on bioactivity rather than a few abundant chemicals?

Leiden University offers a unique interdisciplinary joint-degree Master programme in technical medicine together with TU Delft, Erasmus University Rotterdam and their academic medical centers.

Promotor: Jan van der Greef; Co-promotors: Mei Wang; Eduard van Wijk

Science

The mission in this research group, headed by Ad IJzerman, is to design and synthesize novel and better ligands for drug targets. Drug discovery is a lengthy but inspiring adventure. It is often an interplay between academic institutes and pharmaceutical industry, in which scientists at university develop…

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

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

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…

The path to rational drug and dose selection

Medicines do not follow the one size fits all principle, because genetic differences can influence their efficiency. That is what research by PhD candidate Julia Hillger shows. She defends her PhD dissertation Take it Personal on Thursday 7 December.

The aim of the research programme Systems Pharmacology lies in the development of personalised medicine strategies, and development of new systems-based approaches in translational and clinical pharmacology.

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…

The division of Systems Biomedicine and Pharmacology focusses on personalised medicine and the development of novel systems-based approaches in translational and clinical pharmacology.

We are very happy to welcome you to spend a semester or year studying or doing an internship with us at the Leiden University Medical Center. Here you will find information on your course timetables and registration.

Promotor: C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel, Co-promotor: Sandra de Weert

The Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) is a centre of excellence for multidisciplinary research on drug discovery and development.

The aim of the division of Systems Biomedicine and Pharmacology lies in the development of personalised medicine strategies, and development of new systems-based approaches in translational and clinical pharmacology.

Mathematician Stéphanie van der Pas, the winner of the C.J. Kok Jury Award for her Ph.D. thesis in 2017, divides her time between research and education, and between pure mathematics and practical application.

Science, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR)

Can drug screening for tuberculosis treatment be made more efficient?

The €6.24 million EU-funded research project QSPainRelief has kicked off. The project aims to help patients suffering from chronic pain with novel, personalised combinational treatments and is coordinated by Elizabeth de Lange from the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research.

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

Medicines are becoming increasingly precise and innovative, but at the same time increasingly expensive. With their innovations, it is up to universities to increase competition, thus causing prices to drop. This is what newly appointed Professor of Biomolecular Analysis Hubertus Irth argues. His inaugural…

Cell-based medicinal products (CBMPs) show great promise when it comes to the treatment of genetic disorders. However, there is limited knowledge about CBMP stability during their production, storage, and administration to patients. The main focus of my research is the characterization of CBMPs using…

Fascinated by science since high school, Alireza Mashaghi Tabari is driven to explore new ways of thinking in medicine. With a strong academic network, he educates students and gives public lectures. For his research at LACDR, he won the C.J. Kok Public Award 2018, making him the Faculty of Science's…

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: T.R. van Andel

We have developed a microfluidic platform for complex 3D organotypic cell cultures (so-called organ-on-a-chip systems) which are suited for integration in 96 or higher well plate format.

Faster development of efficacious medicines; that is the goal of molecular pharmacologist Maarten Doornbos of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. He wants to find out which mechanisms influence the binding of drugs to a promising drug target in the body. That way, it will become easier to…

One of the holy grails of drug research is to be able to assess the safety of chemicals and pharmaceuticals without using laboratory animals. Researchers from Leiden University, among others, now receive a grant from the National Science Agenda to pursue that goal.

Metabolic diseases are a burden on the European population and health care system. It is increasingly recognised that individual differences with respect to history, lifestyle, and genetic make-up affect disease progression and treatment response. A Systems Medicine approach, based on computational…

Collecting as much information as possible about administering a new medicine to people can save a lot of money.

What are the biological effects of Chinese herbal medicine in regulation of cancer cell metastasis?

The two-years master’s specialisation System Biomedicine and Pharmacology at Leiden university focuses on predicting drug response with computational modelling, developing individualised therapies, and developing innovative analytical tools for personalised health strategies.

The master’s programme of Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences at Leiden University examines the research area of bio-pharmaceutical sciences and drug research. It offers seven specialisations ranging from BioTherapeutics to Industrial Pharmacy.

Source: J Cheminform, Volume 6, Issue 1 (2014)

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…

The predication of the effect (efficiency and toxicity) of a drug in a patient is very important in (i) clinical decision support and (ii) the development of novel drug treatments.

Lecture

Can we link multiple components from herbal extracts with their biological activities?

Personalised healthcare could be the answer to insufficient treatment of chronically ill people. Therefore, PhD Junzeng Fu tries to predict the response of a patient to a drug. Strikingly, she combines western medicine with Chinese medicine diagnosis. Promotion Tuesday 21 February.