A European cooperation project on disinformation and fact-checking training empowering current and future media and media education professionals, to identify, prevent, and combat fake news spread over digital networks.

This work describes the use of click-to-release chemistry to get spatiotemporal control over immunocytokine activity. Until now, immunocytokines (cytokines coupled to a tumor-targeting-moiety) remained active throughout the body, being able to bind their respective receptors, causing mild to severe…

With defending his thesis ‘Applications of topology to Weyl semimetals and quantum computing’, the Leiden theoretical physicist Tom O'Brien has gained the rare 'cum laude' qualification. The freshly minted PhD has started a five year research programme on quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, funded…

Two excellent young chemists, Jeroen Codée and Sander van Kasteren, have received an ECHO grant for €260,000 from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This funding will allow them to begin their research projects.

An international team of laboratory astrophysicists and astrochemical modellers has shown that glycine, the simplest amino acid and an important building block of life, can form under the harsh conditions that govern chemistry in space. The results have been published this week in Nature Astronomy and…

The research described in this thesis focused on the preparation of S/N functionalized carbene ligands and their transition metal complexes, and the exploration of their application as electrocatalysts for proton reduction.

The inverse electron demand Diels-Alder (IEDDA) pyridazine elimination emerged in 2013 as a new bioorthogonal reaction and constitutes a prime example of what is now known as dissociative bioorthogonal chemistry. The research described in this Thesis aims to develop synthetic strategies which enable…

This thesis has described novel synthetic methods to produce a variety of (glyco)peptides and their application in the study of various immunological processes.

Professor Hermen Overkleeft has received the esteemed Roy L. Whistler International Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry for 2024 by the International Carbohydrate Organization. The award recognises Overkleeft’s outstanding contributions to the field of carbohydrate chemistry and biochemistry.

Our educational team has been awarded an ICTO-grant of €12000 for the LACDR for flipping the Biochemistry 2 classroom.

Andreas Bender, Assistant Professor for Medicinal Chemistry in the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the Leiden / Amsterdam Center for Drug Research, received the

With Sylvestre Bonnet, Jeroen Codée and Remus Dame, the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) will be getting no less than three new professors. Bonnet will become professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry, Codée professor in Organic Chemistry and Dame professor in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry.

In this thesis, bioorthogonal chemistry is combined with correlative light-electron microscopy to selectively label and study pathogenic intracellular bacteria within the host immune cell.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E. Bouwman

A common assumption in chemistry is that the coordination number of a catalyst's surface determines the reactivity of the reaction it catalyses. Strikingly, Leiden chemists have now proven that this is not true for nature’s most simple chemical reaction: the dissociation of hydrogen. The researchers…

In the search for new medicines against diseases such as cancer, a Leiden team has developed a new workflow. This approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) with molecular modelling and is suitable for finding unknown and innovative drug structures, the researchers proved.

Last year, chemists Dennis Wander and Hermen Overkleeft contributed to an important discovery about a widely used cancer drug. Their research has now been recognised as Finalist for the PNAS Cozzarelli Prize in the Biomedical Sciences class.

Quantum hardware comes with a different computing paradigm and new ways to tackle applications. Much effort has to be put into understanding how to leverage this technology to give real-world advantages in areas of interest for industries such as combinatorial optimization or machine learning.

Supramolecular polymers are class of materials that are formed by non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding, π-π interactions, electrostatic interactions and the hydrophobic effect.

How can we understand the material instability of photographic (mixed media) artworks (1960s - present) from an integrated approach of Art History, Conservation Science and Chemistry in order to preserve these works for the future?

In order to be able to develop effective medicine and treatments to prevent or cure autoimmune diseases or cancer we need to understand the mechanisms how they arise and what drives their course.Unravelling the fundamental molecular mechanisms influencing the onset and course of diseases such as allergies,…

Chemical biology research at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry is aimed at understanding biological processes at the molecular level to strengthen the knowledge base of human health and disease. The approach to achieve this goal is a fundamental chemical one; with the aid of chemical probes biological…

On March 27th, 2015 the biannual Dutch Medicinal Chemistry Prize for the best Dutch Ph.D. thesis in the field was awarded to Dr. Dong Guo, a current postdoc researcher in our lab, by the Section of Medicinal Chemistry of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society.

PhD candidate Dennis Wander searches for the best of both worlds. That is to say: a cancer drug that is effective and also has minimal side effects. To this end, he makes new molecules inspired by two existing medicines. And not without result: ‘We have created a new variant that is very promising.’…

How are carbohydrates processed by the immune system? Can carbohydrates be used to trigger T-cells against other conjugated antigens? Can they be used as adjuvants?

The aim of this thesis is to study cell-cell interactions and the development of an assay to explore and quantify the exchange of membrane compounds.

Tackling key challenges of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry to aid drug discovery is one of the focus areas of Leiden University. To this end, the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development network (LED3) was established by the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Institute of Biology Leiden…

Alumnus Vincent Renken studied Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences in Leiden and is now co-founder of an outdoor escape room company. ‘I asked myself: do you want a standard life or an adventure?’

Researchers of the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry have made an important discovery about the commonly used anti-cancer drug doxorubicin. They have found a way to reduce its side effects without sacrificing the effectiveness of the medication. This is encouraging…

Leiden Professor of Molecular astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck has been awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). She has been awarded 2.3 million euros in research funding for the MOLDISK programme. Within this programme, Van Dishoeck wants to connect chemistry and physics in…

Quantum computing is an emerging technology, which holds the potential to simulate complex quantum systems beyond the reach of classical numerical methods.Despite recent formidable advancements in quantum hardware, constructing a quantum computer capable of performing useful calculations remains challenging.In…

The redox-conversion reaction of metal-disulfide and metal-thiolate complexes are important, as they may shed light on electron-transfer reactions that often occur in Nature.

Metal-based prodrugs based on ruthenium(II) polypyridyl complexes have proven to be very suitable for application in both photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photo-activated chemotherapy (PACT).

On the occasion of the Women & Girls in Science Day, BBC Science Focus Magazine highlighted 6 prominent female chemists. Among them is Leiden professor Ewine van Dishoeck: 'Astrochemist investigating the building blocks of life'.

Twenty years from now, the world population is estimated to be around 8.7 billion people, compared to the current 7.3 billion. In combination with the improvements in living standards and the corresponding growth in consumption, this will result in an enormous increase in the demand for food, consumables,…

This thesis presents the first synthetic peptides ADP-ribosylated on serine, threonine, tyrosine, arginine and cysteine.

Cyclic peptides are investigated as a platform to induce different orientations between various ligands.

In photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT), a biologically active compound is caged by a light-cleavable protecting group.