Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water, Co-promotores: L.T.M. van der Ven, A.S. Kienhuis

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson

Promotores: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg & Dr. M.G. Vijver

On Wednesday the 4th of September, Queen Máxima opened the renovated tropical greenhouse complex of the Leiden Hortus Botanicus. At the occasion Máxima met with IBL-PhD student Mahin Ghorbani from Iran and talked with her about her work on drug discovery from Iranian medicinal plants using zebrafish…

One of the major limitations in culturing complex tissues or organs is the lack of vascularization in the cultured tissue. Development of a functional capillary bed could overcome this problem.

Which immune mechanisms are involved in host defense against Staphylococcal infection?

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

How do macrophages and neutrophils contribute to metastatic onset?

Zebrafish is an excellent model organism for studying various human diseases. Due to opaqueness of the adult phase, in vivo studies are restricted to early embryonic stages. This raises the need for rapid sensitive and non-invasive in vivo imaging methods to follow developmental processes, not only…

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

Death in all types of melanomas is generally caused by metastasis. Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common intraocular melanoma, there are currently no (patient-derived) animal models that faithfully recapitulate metastatic dissemination of UM.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok

How can zebrafish research help to understand and fight human cancer?

Exploring the mechanism of targeted nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery using the zebrafish model

Although nanoparticles are extensively used in various applications like consumer products and have most probably entered the environment, little is known about the effects of these particles on living organisms.

In this thesis, we will utilize embryonic zebrafish tumour models to understand the interaction between engrafted human cancer cells and macrophages from the host, test drug administration modalities and anti-cancer efficacies of newly-developed PDT and PACT compounds, and test a light-triggered liposomal…

How to make a quantitative assessment of the relative contribution to toxicity of ions and particles? Is the toxicity of nanoparticles related to their size or shape? Which physicochemical property of nanoparticles is an appropriate dose metric of nanoparticles?

Is there a sufficiently large market for drug screening and testing in Zebrafish larvae using membrane fusion?

A novel in vivo model system for studies on glucocorticoid resistance

Can zebrafish larvae be used as a behavioural model for screening natural products as potential neurotropic drugs?

How can zebrafish models be used to gain a better understanding of host-pathogen interaction mechanisms and to screen new drugs for infectious disease treatment?

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

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.

New drugs for use as tuberculosis (TB) treatment are needed due to the constrains of classical antibiotics against TB and the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains, making TB a harder and harder disease to treat.

In this thesis, we have studied the potential of the zebrafish larval model in studying the ECS, as a complementary model to the existing rodent models.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. den Hertog

How can zebrafish research help understanding human diseases?

Leiden molecular cell biologists in the research group of Annemarie Meijer have discovered novel early macrophage-specific genes in zebrafish, including a signal transducer pivotal for the migration of macrophages in the innate immune response to bacterial infection. Their findings were published on…

In this thesis we investigated the ability of two-photon multifocal microscopy for single-molecule microscopy in live cells and organisms.

We use zebrafish as a model organism to study human development and disease as well as animal welfare and environmental impact.

The research described in this thesis has, using the zebrafish as a model system, shed new light on the intricate relationship between TB and DM2, in particular on the role of leptin, SHP-1 and glucocorticoids.

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.

Can zebrafish provide a fast, sensitive in vivo vertebrate model for identifying novel mechanisms of Ewing sarcoma progression and for development of new anticancer compounds in a time- and cost-effective manner?

What are the host immune defence mechanisms that control intracellular infections and how are these subverted by pathogens?

Promotor: A.H. Meijer, Co-promotor: B.E. Snaar-Jagalska

Exploiting metabolic vulnerabilities to identify anticancer compounds in zebrafish synthetic lethality screens.

Ecotox is a stimulating top-facility that provides an integrative research environment around the topic of ecotoxicological testing and experimental research. Research focus: Dose-response modelling Mode-of-actions and mechanism-of-actions Test method development, in view of targets in…

Our facilities cover:

Can chemical safety assessment be improved with zebrafish embryo-based reporter assays?

Promotor: A. Kros

The main aim of my Ph.D. thesis is to further explore the value of using early developing zebrafish larvae (up to 5 dpf) as a model to study anxiety-like behaviour and their pharmacological modulation with drugs.

Ewa Snaar-Jagalska, Shuning He and colleagues from IBL, LION and LACDR reported on a new zebrafish study to understand micrometastasis of human cancer cells. They discovered a novel role for neutrophils in assisting metastasis formation, which provides critical insights for anti-cancer therapies.

Can drug screening for tuberculosis treatment be made more efficient?

Promotor: Carel J. ten Cate, Co-Promotor: Hans W. Slabbekoorn

The work described in this dissertation contributes to a better mechanistic understanding of nanoparticles in vivo. To achieve that goal, we used the zebrafish as a highly predictive pre-screening model of nanoparticles.

Promotor: J.G.E.M.Fraaije, Co-promotor: A. Kros

The zebrafish is a promising vertebrate model organism in early drug discovery and development.

An international research consortium led by Bob van de Water, Professor of Toxicology at Leiden University, has been awarded a prestigious Horizon2020 grant of 30 million euros.

What is the mechanism of action preceding a physiological effects induced by metallic nanoparticles?