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.

Professors Simcha Jong (Leiden University) and Rifat Atun (Harvard University) convened an exploratory seminar to discuss challenges for health systems in realising the potential of precision medicine at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies in Cambridge, MA on 17 April 2017.

Oncode Investigator Mario van der Stelt and his colleagues have discovered a new potential drug that suppresses chemotherapy induced neuropathic pain.

Aart Hendriks, Professor of Health Law at Leiden University, held a lecture on euthanasia on Wednesday 11 December 2019. He was invited by the Madrid section of the Spanish Medical Colleges Organization.

The Minister has requested urgent advice from Sombroek-van Doorm in relation to the vaccination of children aged between 5 and 12 years against COVID-19.

We investigate bacteria and fungi to understand their malicious or beneficial impact on food crops and their pathogenic or antibiotic role in human health.

In the Phenomix Medical Delta Field Lab, which was officially opened on Thursday 9 July, scientists, healthcare institutions and businesses work together to develop innovative applications in the field of metabolomics. This research field makes it possible to determine which drugs will be effective…

Marta Fiocco has been appointed as of 1 April as professor of applied mathematics, in particular medical statistics. Fiocco's appointment is at the Faculty of Science and at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC). She conducts research into 'personalised medicine', tailor-made medicines for cancer…

Vanessa Frodermann, a PhD student at the Biopharmaceutical department of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, has discovered that arteriosclerosis could be inhibited by cellular therapy. Arteriosclerosis is one of the leading causes of the development of cardiovascular disease. Her PhD defence…

Five Leiden researchers have been nominated as members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).They will be inaugurated on 16 September.

The Minister of Education, Culture and Science has approved the application for the master’s programme in Pharmacy in Leiden. This is an important step on the road to a new master’s programme.

By making smart use of available data, the health and care of people can be substantially improved. Marco Spruit wants to use language and machine learning in the coming years to identify and solve the biggest care issues in the region of The Hague. He has been appointed Professor of Advanced Data Science…

Lecture

Pancras Hogendoorn, Professor of Pathology and Dean of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), received an honorary doctorate from Semmelweis University in Budapest on Friday 8 October 2019.

The STW project Energy Efficient Computer-Brain Interaction (principal investigator for LIACS: dr. T.P. Stefanov) has been granted. Funding for LIACS: 1 PhD student + travel/equipment budget, project duration: 4 years.

When children wean off from heavy medication, they often experience withdrawal symptoms. The severity of these symptoms is often difficult to predict. Pharmacologist Bas Goulooze developed a computer model to determine the best weaning strategy for each child. His research has now been published in…

‘Children’s rights are somewhat of a poor relation’, says Professor of Law and Health Mirjam Sombroek-van Doorm. In her inaugural lecture, she will emphasise how more attention needs to be paid to children’s rights in current thinking on law and health.

According to a number of British historians, the elderly had a particularly high status in the early Middle Ages. A new book by Leiden cultural historian Thijs Porck sheds a different light on the matter: elderly people had to earn that respect first, and old age was often described in negative terms…

We bring science to your home! Join our online study called Biological Motion study!

Ambroise Paré, Thomas Sydenham and Herman Boerhaave: all were great medical innovators in their time. We know far less about the 19th-century Russian physician and scientist Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov. PhD candidate Inge Hendriks researched him in Dutch and Russian archives and collections. She discovered…

An e-coaching programme helps people with chronic kidney disease, particularly in areas that patients themselves want to work on. ‘A healthy lifestyle is important for patients with kidney disease: it can slow down the loss of kidney function and there will be fewer complications,’ Katja Cardol explains…

What is the best method and time to test the effectiveness of medicines? PhD student Rob van Wijk of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) discovered zebrafish larvae are best used in drug research when they are five days old. His findings were published on 15 February in the journal…

Does medicine make patients feel better or worse? We are getting better at predicting this from people’s DNA profiles, says Professor Jesse Swen. ‘It never fails to fascinate me how one DNA base pair can have such a huge effect on treatment with medication and the outcome.’

The universities in the Netherlands and Oxford University Press (OUP) have been unable to reach a new agreement for access to academic journals.

On 5 November 2021, Professor Michiel van de Sande of the Department of Orthopedics in the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) delivered his inaugural lecture ‘The Art of Doing and Doing Nothing’. Van de Sande used the opportunity to explore both physical and philosophical aspects of co-decision…

What determines healthy behavior and how do you promote healthy choices and routines? These are a few questions currently being addressed by Marieke Adriaanse, recently appointed Professor of Behavioral Intervention in Population Health Management at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC).

It is time for the international community to put a stop to war crimes – especially against medical personnel, argued international chair of Doctors Without Borders Joanne Liu in her Cleveringa lecture.

Researcher and lecturer Susana Valdez investigates how migrants make use of online translation technology in medical situations. Her research suggests that they often encounter obstacles when using machine translation in these settings. Potential problems include a lack of understanding or trust.

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…

Online teaching has made it much easier for international students to join in our courses. The Leiden minor in Global Health, for instance. Students from Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Malawi logged on and made a valuable contribution with their knowledge, about tropical diseases, for instance.

A new treatment for atherosclerosis showed promising results in isolated cells but proved to be less effective in initial animal tests. Bachelor student Biopharmaceutical Sciences Willemijn van der Heijden aimed to understand why. She investigated whether the formation of a protein layer around the…

Research conducted at Leiden has established that guts-on-chips respond in the same way to aspirin as real human organs do. This is a sign that these model organs are good predictors of the effect of medical drugs on the human body. Publication in Nature Communications on 15 August.

Four promising young researchers from Leiden University have received a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant will enable them to gain valuable research experience at top universities abroad.

Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are collaborating on the development of a conversation tool for patients with breast, prostate and skin cancer. The aim is to create a conversation tool that can support cancer patients in their care and help them make decisions.…

Four university medical centres, including the LUMC, are joining forces to increase pandemic preparedness in the Netherlands.

February 8 saw the launch of the Medical Delta ‘Sustainable Hospitals’ Interdisciplinary Thesis Lab. The research projects will touch on different aspects of healthcare. The students hope they will be able to offer practical solutions to make hospitals greener.

The High Troughput Microscopy Dutch Flagship Node that includes the Leiden Cell Observatory Screening platform is now officially ratified as a Euro-BioImaging (EuBI) Node Candidate

It is becoming increasingly clear that the placebo effect has a great influence on medical treatment. An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Professor of Health Psychology Andrea Evers from Leiden University has now written a first set of guidelines on how to apply the placebo…

Leiden's Boerhaave Museum and Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have discovered parts of a skeleton in an 18th-century manikin. The manikin was once used as a teaching aid for midwives. As far as we know, this is the only one of its kind in the world.

A new biophysical technique enables scientists to study the behavior of Aβ-peptide. This protein is known to play a role in Alzheimer’s, but for effective medication we need to know exactly what it does. Publication in Journal of Biological Physics on March 16th.

A memorable farewell symposium and a royal distinction: Professor Joke Bouwstra could not have completed her career at Leiden with more pleasure. On Friday, 14 June, she received a Royal Honor from Leiden Mayor Peter van der Velden, who appointed Bouwstra as a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion for…

Friday 26 October the NLF prices were awarded. LLM alumna Annemarie Schuite won the 'Albert Plesmanrijs' for her investigation on Aviation Safety versus Medical Disclosure.

NWO awarded a grant for novel research on Complex and Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The grant will fund a four-year research project in which they hope to devise a method to explore and find optimal designs for CPS. Todor Stefanov, Associate Professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced…

How can you tie together scientific research and practical applications? That is exactly what Professor of Translational Data Science Marco Spruit is concerned with, he tells FMT Gezondheid. 'It's about taking socially relevant questions as a starting point for your research.'

A team of surgeons at Leiden University Medical Center and the Centre for Human Drug Research have removed a lung tumour that they pinpointed using fluorescence. This is the first time that this technique has been used in Europe in a patient with a lung tumour.

Professor Annemieke Aartsma-Rus from Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) has received the Ammodo Science Award for her research into the muscular disease Duchenne.

Via expedited proceedings at Leeuwarden Court of Appeal, a mother is trying to impose a relatively new treatment for her 15-year-old daughter’s eating disorder. The girl is suffering from anorexia nervosa and if she does not receive urgent treatment which the girl herself supports, there is a chance…

Kidney transplantation used to be an experimental risky procedure, but is now routinely performed by many countries worldwide.

The Department of Medical Microbiology at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) is researching antiviral drugs that could treat and prevent SARS-CoV-2 in various projects. One part of the PanCoroNed project is being led by Martijn van Hemert and involves lab tests into the antiviral effect of molecules…

Cleveringa professor Joanne Liu, international president of Artsen Zonder Grenzen, will give an extra lecture on 24 November. The subject will be how the Ebola crisis was tackled. The Cleveringa lecture itself, on help to refugees, will be held on 25 November.