It often takes longer for women with heart problems to get the right diagnosis. In her Annie Romein-Verschoor Lecture, Professor Hester den Ruijter will talk about how hormones influence the heart and the importance of medical research that focuses specifically on women.

Recent insolvency cases highlight the growing importance of cross-border insolvency matters in international transactions. To this end, many instruments have been introduced and implemented in recent years across the world. At this page we present a selection of relevant instruments in the field of…

The Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) is an internationally oriented institute for research and education in biology.

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

In vitro disease models play a fundamental role in drug research. They enable the systemic identification and validation of disease mechanisms and the discovery of possible drug targets. However, more than often, drug candidates that are identified in vitro fail in the later clinical stages of drug…

Many dangerous diseases such as COVID-19, Ebola and Q fever have jumped from animals to humans. But it is not only because of these diseases that we should include animals in our health policy, but also because of their right to health.

The cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2R) is associated with several inflammatory diseases with an unmet medical need (e.g. Alzheimers, multiple sclerosis, reumatoid arthritis). Development of new chemical biology strategies to study this protein is essential to aid future development of drugs for these…

Our research is aimed at a smoother and speedier transition from preclinical research to pharmacological interventions, and the delivery of drugs in the human body by use of small molecules and biologics.

The loss of T-cell homeostasis and tolerance towards self-antigens is the underlying cause of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases like atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis or type I diabetes. Traditionally, the treatment of these diseases consisted on systemic immune suppression, which can entail…

Cholesterol influences many pathways, including serving as precursor for adrenal steroidogenesis. Imbalance of cholesterol levels has been implicated in several diseases including cardiovascular diseases and its underlying pathology, atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is the most important underlying process that drives cardiovascular disease, and is characterized by an accumulation of cholesterol which triggers an inflammatory response in the vessel wall.

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…

Postdoc Lucia Bossoni has received an NWO Veni grant to research brain diseases for the next three years. She will work in labs at both the LUMC and the Leiden physics institute.

Overview of the CML reports

Why are mycobacteria such successful pathogens? And are there defence mechanisms in the body that help reduce an infection? To find out, Annemarie Meijer has been awarded the NWO Open Competition ENW-XL grant. She will not explore this quest alone. Five other leading Dutch research groups are participating…

PhD defence

From Incident to Precedent

From 1550 onwards, a great interest in the natural world developed across Europe. This interest was not only stimulated by a growing knowledge of local flora and fauna, but also by the import of numerous exotic animal and plant species. Think, for instance, of researches and collectors like Gessner…

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) was established in 1919 based on the premise that social justice is a condition for lasting peace. On February 2019 the ILO celebrated its 100th anniversary with an international symposium to consider the future of the ILO.

Representing Japanese Colonial 'Heritage' in Taiwan

This study interrogates contemporary and historical uses of barbarism, arguing that barbarism also has a disruptive, insurgent potential.

This paper aims to understand the most common underlying problems causing strategic surprise in the context of the European Union.

Until the 1990s, the only known planets were those in our Solar System. Three decades later, several thousand exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, and substantial efforts have been made to explore these strange new worlds through spectroscopic analyses of their atmosphe…

The project ‘Founding an Inclusive Space’ investigates the histories of various LGBT+ archives in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Since my master's thesis on the landed property of the Frisian monasteries in the Middle Ages I am highly interested in the do ut des-aspects of the relation between religious houses and the lay world. Key words here are: property, power, patronage and the role of religious institutions in the 'salvation…

Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State. Dennie Oude Nijhuis.

In this article, Ben de Jong, research fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines the relationship between double agents and their handlers.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson, Co-Promotor: F. Witte

Inspired by a critical reconsideration of current monolithic approaches to the study of Greek religion, this book argues that ancient Greeks displayed a disquieting capacity to validate two (or more) dissonant, if not contradictory, representations of the divine world in a complementary rather than…

This project suggests a reconceptualisation of pre- and non-capitalist imperial monetary policy, arguing that the existing literature about imperial financial flows has unnecessarily privileged ideas of largesse and seemingly chaotic monetary distribution. Using the divergent cases of the Roman Empire…

Mashaghi lab conducts research at the interface of physics, engineering and biomedicine. We develop and use theoretical and experimental approaches to address basic and applied research problems.

In this top-rated course, you will learn how the European Union prepares and decides on policy, and how policy is transferred to member states and implemented by various authorities. It discusses the challenges of the European multi-level governance structure and the main causes of policy failure or…

Α-synuclein, a protein associated with Parkinson’s disease, proves to bind with membranes in a surprisingly efficient way. It confirms scientists’ suspicion of the protein’s leading role in the transmission of neurotransmitters between nerve cells in the brain. Publication in PLoS ONE.

Cells in our bodies are often threatened by errors in our own proteins. The FLOW consortium, comprising scientists from various institutions including Leiden, is poised to meticulously map out for the first time how cells control proteins, correcting or removing faulty ones. This endeavour holds promise…

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.

To get a feeling of how we operate at LED3 when it comes to Early Drug Discovery, please browse through our case studies. When you select a case study you’ll find relevant contacts.

This research group, headed by Miranda van Eck, focusses on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Cardiovascular disease constitutes a major health issue worldwide. Although significant knowledge has been obtained on the development of atherosclerotic…

The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) is committed to improving healthcare and the health of individuals. The LUMC staff put this mission into practice on a daily basis with their leading research, cutting-edge teaching and optimal, innovative healthcare.

Regenerative medicine is a new way of treatment that helps impaired cells, tissues, and organs work well again. We do this by repairing, replacing, or restoring cells, tissues, and organs after damage from illness or injury. This includes treating long-term diseases such as diabetes, kidney diseases,…

If an echo (or ultrasound) shows that a foetus has a heart or other defect, parents face difficult decisions. Then an idea of their child’s shorter and longer-term future is literally a matter of life and death. Haak will argue in her inaugural lecture that the cohort studies of rare diseases that are…

The rapid advances in imaging technology enable to see inside the body with ever increasing detail.

Both psoriasis and atheroslcerosis are diseases characterized by a chronic and systemic inflammatory profile with local lipid disturbances that alter the barrier function of the skin (psoriasis) and cause the development of atherosclerotic plaques (atherosclerosis).

Zebrafish is an excellent model organism for studying various human diseases. Due to opaqueness of the adult phase, in vivo studies are restricted to early embryonic stages. This raises the need for rapid sensitive and non-invasive in vivo imaging methods to follow developmental processes, not only…

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, , Co-Promotor: Young Hae Choi

Research projects

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.A. Bouwstra, Co-promotor: Dr. A. El Ghalbzouri

Solute carrier (SLC) transporters are a large and diverse class of relatively understudied transmembrane proteins.

This research investigates the impact of socioeconomic developments on the physical condition of medieval populations in Holland and Zeeland between AD 1000 and 1600 through the analysis of human skeletal remains from three archaeological sites.