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 drug screening for tuberculosis treatment be made more efficient?

Who benefits from CXCR/CXCL chemokine signaling during infection: host or pathogen?

Can drugs that target host signaling pathways be used to eradicate antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

The infectious diseases malaria and tuberculosis are responsible for 2.1 million deaths every year. Leiden researchers are currently testing a new tuberculosis vaccine.

Effective host defence against tuberculosis bacteria depends on a properly balanced level of inflammation. The Inflammafish project uses zebrafish larvae to study how autophagy controls this inflammation and vice versa.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the pathogen causing tuberculosis (TB), is the leader among all pathogens responsible for the most human deaths today and it is considered as one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. There is an increasing occurrence of multidrug-resistant and even totally drug-resistant…

Macrophages – the front line of our immune system – protect us from infections. But in the case of the tuberculosis bacteria, this often goes wrong. The group of Annemarie Meijer from the Leiden Institute of Biology has now discovered that macrophages in zebrafish are better able to eliminate tuberculosis…

Can we exploit the cell death machinery of the host to develop new host-directed anti-TB treatments?

What is the role of cell wall-deficiency in the persistence of tuberculosis?

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global health problem caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). In 2015, there were estimated to be 10.4 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths ascribed to TB, making it one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. Unfortunately, the only current registered…

IBL-researcher Phil Elks in the group of Annemarie Meijer won the Cell Observatory Publication of the Year 2013. He received the award for his paper in PLoS Pathogens, showing that activation of hypoxia signaling protects against mycobacterial infection.

Michiel van der Vaart with a team from Leiden University and the LUMC, led by IBL-researcher Annemarie Meijer, discovered that DRAM1 is a protein that regulates anti-bacterial autophagy, a defense mechanism against infections such as tuberculosis.

Though tuberculosis can be cured today, new resistant strains of the bacteria are becoming a growing problem in the medical world. Biologist Annemarie Meijer and her colleagues are studying resistance to this disease. Their research is already yielding several interesting clues that could help the development…

The cellular recycling system in zebrafish is capable of eating harmful bacteria and thus resist infections such as tuberculosis and salmonellosis. That is written by Leiden biologists from the group of Annemarie Meijer. Stimulating this form of defence could be used in new treatment methods against…

This summer postdoctoral researcher Mónica Varela from the Institute of Biology Leiden was awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Six questions about her project and hopes for the future.

This thesis describes the structural and biochemical characterization of the β-lactamase BlaC from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), and the Alr and YlmE proteins from Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2).Mtb is the main cause of tuberculosis.

The effective treatment of tuberculosis (TB) remains a major challenge to global health.

Promotor: H.P. Spaink, A.H. Meijer Co-promotor: R. Marin-Juez

BlaC is the β-lactamase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We show that it can recover from inhibition by clavulanic acid and that phosphate helps it do so.

Promotie

Promotores: A.H. Meijer, H.P. Spaink

Can we enhance the capacity of host immune cells to kill mycobacteria via production of reactive nitrogen species?

TRANSAUTOPHAGY is a European COST action to promote multidisciplinary research on autophagy and translation of knowledge to applications.

How can zebrafish research help understanding human diseases?

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease which is spreaded through the air. It is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and it led 1.7 million people to death in 2016. This mortarlity rate is concentrated in developing countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, and South Africa. These numbers make…

Promotie

An international consortium of research groups is aiming to develop novel antibiotics against the tuberculosis bacteria and two other deadly bacteria. The European Union has awarded a total of 18 million euros to the RespiriTB and RespiriNTM projects. Researchers from the Leiden University Medical Centre…

Tuberculosis bacteria and other intracellular pathogens use cells of our immune system as Trojan horses to spread into tissues. Annemarie Meijer, professor of immunobiology, explains how research into innate defence mechanisms using zebrafish inspires novel strategies for infectious disease treatmen…

An interdisciplinary team of Leiden researchers has discovered that wasting syndrome, a severe byproduct of tuberculosis, is the same for all humans and animals studied. The discovery offers new opportunities to investigate the still insufficiently understood condition. The scientists also developed…

We perform multidisciplinary research at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels of animal biology to increase fundamental understanding of health and disease.

Are Weyl particles the ideal conductors? Do cells without a cell wall play a role in chronic Tuberculosis infections? Carlo Beenakker and Dennis Claessen want to answer these questions. They both received a KLEIN grant from the NWO. With these grants, NWO wants to stimulate innovative, fundamental r…

Source: PLoS ONE, Volume 10, Issue 3 (2015)

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?

Our immune system protects us against disease, but every now and then, something goes wrong: an enemy invades our bodies or our immune system attacks our own cells and we become ill. Doctors and researchers at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) want to be able to manipulate the immune system…

Can we find and commercialise new treatments for chronic disease that affect our ageing population? And how can we customise this research and development programme to the small but highly-developed Netherlands research economy?

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

How can novel bioimaging technologies and vertebrate model species be used to gain a better understanding of early cellular behaviours with the ultimate goal to increase our understanding of human development and disease processes?

Unraveling the immune-suppressive actions of drugs like prednisone.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok

Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen, Instituut Biologie Leiden (IBL)

Promotores: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink & Prof.dr. P.C.W. Hogendoorn, Co-promotor: Dr. M.J.M. Schaaf

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.

We aim to develop a drug-delivery method based on the production of biomolecules directly at the target site.