This project aims to assess the risk of spread of antimicrobial resistance genes in the environment derived from currently used synthetic biology approaches in the field of drug discovery.

Professor by Special Appointment of Clinical Neuropharmacology Geert Jan Groeneveld will deliver his inaugural lecture entitled ‘The importance of the biomarker’ on 11 March 2022. According to him, new genetic knowledge will revolutionise drug research.

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

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Co-Promotor: S.C.A. de Jager

This thesis focuses on amyloid proteins, a class of proteins that convert into amyloid fibrils.

New funding allows IBL-researcher Herman Spaink to purchase a measurement device for more studies on human diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis using zebrafish as the model system.

Aceruloplasminemia is a very rare, genetic disease accompagnied with iron accumulation that causes movement disorder and brain damage at early age.

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

Do humans and zebra finches share cognitive mechanisms that are important for speech perception?

How does FoxP1 affect auditory perception on a behavioural and genomic level?

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.

The Netherlands X-omics Initiative is a new facility as part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Infrastructures. It is partly funded by NWO with a total budget of 40 million euro. The project started on September 2018 and will last for ten years.

On 3 April, Professor Syed Faisal Ahmed from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) will give his inaugural lecture ‘Strength in Numbers’. He will emphasise the benefit of registries to rare disease research.

Leiden chemists, together with colleagues at the University of York (UK) and Technion (Israel) have discovered a small, sugar-like molecule that maintains the integrity of tissue around a tumour during cancer. This molecule prevents tumour cells from spreading from the primary cancer site to colonise…

Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the world. One of its symptoms is the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta.

A step-by-step approach to building confidence in anxiety-prone young children.

A theoretical project on the insights gained by human (including infant), nonhuman animal and computational studies on artificial grammar learning; identifying the critical questions for future research by developing novel experimental and computational approaches to address these issues.

Alireza Mashaghi and his research team have created a new framework to understand shapes of proteins and DNA. With this framework, many diseases can be understood better.

Mapping of bacterial genomes to combat infectious diseases

The research carried out within the unit Health, Medical and Neuropsychology investigates the psychological factors of health and disease, and the development of innovative treatment.

Can thrips resistance in strawberry be explained based on secondary metabolite profiles and plant morphological traits?

How is vegetative development regulated in plants and how does this affect a plant’s life history strategy?

We aim to engineer streptomycetes to fully exploit their potential for natural product productions, by a rational design and evolution approach.

Cardiovascular diseases are among the most frequent causes of death in the world. The main underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases is the development of atherosclerosis in the medium and large-sized arteries.

The HOPES study is one of the largest investigations of this kind to date! By studying existing brain scans and data collected form over 4,000 14-25 year olds, the project team hopes to identify specific changes in the brain that make young people vulnerable to suicidal thoughts and behaviours.

Dr. Foks obtained this fellowship for the project “Can promotion of efferocytosis induce regression of atherosclerosis?”, in which she aims to identify novel targets to promote regression of atherosclerosis. This research grant allows her to initiate independent research for the next three years.

The studies described in this thesis deal with glycosidases, in particular alpha-galactosidases.

The ambition of the Metabolomics and Analytics Centre led by Thomas Hankemeier is to develop innovative analytical strategies for metabolomics-driven health monitoring and systems biology studies. Understanding the intricate balance between health, disease and adaptation to challenges relies on the…

The aim is to develop methods to assess environmental and occupational exposure to (individual) pesticides, to be applied in epidemiological studies investigating pesticide exposure and human health. Furthermore, we aim to investigate the potential association between exposure to pesticides and Parkinson’s…

A vitamin D deficiency is often associated with smoggy English industrial cities during the Industrial Revolution, but research carried out on skeletons now suggests that the ‘English disease’ was also prevalent in rural areas of the Netherlands. Doctoral defence on 29 January.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Prof.dr. P.H.A. Quax

The Dutch biotech start-up In Ovo is the first company to develop a large-scale solution for determining the sex of a chick while it is still in the egg. This fast and cheap technique can be applied mechanically at hatcheries, which was not possible before.

In this master programme you learn interdisciplinary approaches to address scientific and societal challenges in the field of (bio)medical sciences. The research in our programme Biomedical Sciences relates to the maintenance of health and prevention of disease. You will acquire a skill set suitable…

How is it that some covid-19 patients are affected much worse than others? Can we predict beforehand which of them will develop critical symptoms Professor Thomas Hankemeier, together with a diverse consortium of universities, academic hospitals and industrial partners, is looking for the answers to…

In this article Jeroen Wolbers and Sanneke Kuipers take a closer look at disaster preparedness to reinvigorate the academic debate.

β-Lactamases are enzymes that can break down β-lactam substrates, such as antibiotics, preventing the use of these antibiotics for the treatment of various infectious diseases. However, some compounds, β-lactamase inhibitors, can block these enzymes allowing for possible treatments using a combination…

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?

How can Staphylococcus aureus bacteria subvert the host immune system?

Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

How can cell wall engineering approaches be used to improve streptomycetes for industry to make new antibiotics?

We aim to unravel the complex and intertwining regulatory systems that control development and antibiotic production in streptomycetes.

Atherosclerosis is the main underlying pathology of cardiovascular disease. Atherosclerosis is caused by an immune response which is directed against (modified) lipoproteins which accumulate in the vessel wall.

Leiden University and the city of The Hague are working closely together to increase the impact of our research and education in order to contribute as much as possible to the development of the city.

My ERC Starting Grant, funded with €1.5 million for 5 years as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, is focused on building the early warning system WARN-D to reliably forecast depression in young adults before it occurs. Why depression, and why prediction?