ASLU 14

A research agenda

Are predictive archaeological maps a reliable tool to play an important role in the spatial planning? One of the goals of this project was to develop best practices for the production and application of the models.

Promotor: P.D. Grünwald

Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR)

An integrated approach for the simultaneous prediction of polypharmacology and binding affinity/potency of small molecules.

Describe and identify what dosimetry parameters are of importance to interpret dose-response relationships (eg., mortality, sub-lethal, growth or reproduction inhabitation, DNA damage and reactive oxygen species, etc. ) for metal-based nanoparticles? How to develop quantitative models that enable to…

An integrated approach of physiological concepts, advanced statistical approaches and large clinical datasets.

Clinical development of drugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders has been particularly challenging and still suffers from high attrition rates.

Source: J Cheminform, Volume 7, Issue 1 (2015)

Alternatives to current practice

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.

A novel mathematical model describes spatial-temporal drug distribution within one or more brain units, which are cubic representations of a piece of brain tissue with brain capillaries at the edges.

The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.

Prof. Elizabeth de Lange is concerned with the allocation of resources for the conduct of science towards the goal of best serving the public interest. Also, while she underscores that there is still the need for using animals in drug research, she is concerned about this use, and advocates the use…

The aim of this research area is to be able to predict human drug response on the basis of mathematical models that are developed using preclinical experiments and prior knowledge.

The kidneys play a major role in the elimination of drugs. In children, the exact age-related physiological changes underlying kidney function remain largely unknown.

Researchers of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) have started a 4 year project on developing a system that sends out automatic alerts when components from engines are showing first signs of fatigue.

Clearance is the most important pharmacokinetic parameter for drug dose selection. Pharmacokinetic information is typically first available in the adult population, and in general only limited pharmacokinetic data are available in children when drugs enter into the market. It is therefore of the utmost…

Do medicines arrive in the right amount at the right spot in our brain? By making a model that depicts our brain in small 'brain blocks', Esmée Vendel tries to find an answer to this question. Her new, mathematical model predicts the concentration of medicines in the brain over time and space. Vendel…

In the future, physicians may be able to identify dementia much earlier than they can today because a computer algorithm will be able to predict from brain scans how our memory is going to develop.

Industrial manufacturing processes, such as the production of steel or the stamping of car body parts, are complex semi-batch processes with many process steps, machine parameters and quality indicators.

The field of exoplanet research is rapidly advancing through the development of new technology, observing techniques, and post-processing methods.

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

Stars orbit black holes while jumping up and down. This is the prediction of a theoretical model developed by Leiden physicist Satish Kumar Saravanan, based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. He defends his PhD thesis on July 7th.

Can the (industrial) herbal extraction process be mathematically described and can this model be used to optimize the extraction in terms of quality and economical parameters?

Description of Biotic ligand models: making an inventory of available models & assessment of the variability of the predicted HC5 using the BLMs in different Dutch water types (2005 - 2007)

In this project, we aim to develop mathematical models to mechanistically and quantitatively predict the dynamics of cellular stress pathway activation and its relation with toxic effects when cells are exposed to various toxicants.

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water, Co-promotor: L.S. Price

Promotores: Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Prof.dr. D.R. Stanski

Less than 1 in 10 drug candidates that enter phase 1 clinical trials actually gets approved for human use.

Real-life processes are characterized by dynamics involving time. Examples are walking, sleeping, disease progress in medical treatment, and events in a workflow.

It is a common technique in global optimization with expensive black-box functions to learn a surrogate-model of the response function from past evaluations and use it to decide on the location of future evaluations.

A new study in Nature Plants has explored the most important organising principles that control vegetation behaviour. The insights from this study can be used to improve predictions on climate change. Leiden scientists Peter van Bodegom and Nadia Soudzilovskaia participated in the study.

Source: Structure , Volume 22, Issue 8, pp. 1120-1139 (2014)

Main challenges in skin vaccination are overcoming the stratum corneum (SC) barrier and targeting the antigen presenting cells (APC) in the epidermis and the dermis.

This thesis consists of five chapters on how to construct prediction sets for different types of data and models in a parametric or nonparametric Bayesian paradigm.

The advanced insights obtained for the CNS PBPK model development are currently used to develop advanced mathematical models for drug distribution prediction in other body tissues protected by barriers, such as the gut. The gut PBPK model will be linked to drug effects for treatment of colon cancer.

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…

Promotor: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg, Co-promotor: Dr. ing. M.G. Vijver

We strive to address the challenge of constructing a modeling language to write software which can take advantage of recent hardware developments (multicore, cloud) without compromising in its abstraction levels.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Co-promotor: E.C.M. de Lange

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Co-promotor: O.E. Della Pasqua

Promotor: Roeland M.H. Merks

Promotor: M. Danhof, Co-promotores: J. Freijer, A. Yassen

How to come to valid risk stratification of alcohol use disorder?

Research goal: To support the design of technologies (counter-measures and communication measures) for the prevention, interdiction and mitigation of lone actor extremist events (LOEEs), which are hard to anticipate, yet can be highly damaging to local and national communities and therefore must be…

The objective of this project is the development of a new psychometric model, called the Generalized Squared Distance Logistic Model (GSDLM). This model is an evolution of older psychometric approaches (such as PARELLA, GHCM, and GGUM) and the Gaussian Ordination Models (GOMs) used in environmental…

Source: Nature Biotechnology, Volume 2014, Issue June (2014)