The Minor Computational Approaches to Disease, Signaling and Drug Targets (CADSDT) is focused on fundamental scientific research required for discovery of new drug targets and development of new drugs.

A new research line is the development of liquid biopsy fingerprints to predict early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) stage in human in readily accessible body fluids in human (in collaboration with: Dr. Geert-Jan Groeneveld, CHDR; Prof. Elga de Vries, Free University Medical Center; and others).

A main goal of MSBB research is to address the major bottle-necks in combatting viral diseases: the lack of experimental models that are representative of human pathology and are cost effective and versatile. Viral diseases such as those that cause viral hemorrhagic syndromes or severe acute respiratory…

Accelerating the diagnosis and personalising the management of inherited metabolic diseases.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper

How are the epidermal lipid pathways involved in health and disease.

Promotor: J. van der Greef, T. Hankemeier; Co-promotor: H.A. van Wietmarschen

Chronic inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis affect both the physical and psychological well-being of millions of patients, leading to persistent symptoms like itchiness and sleeplessness. These conditions often result in decreased productivity and quality of life overall,…

In this thesis, we describe the potential of cell mechanical phenotyping for immune cell characterization, diagnosis, drug testing, as well as treatment of disease.

Kohei Suzuki, assistant professor at Leiden University, together with Victor Lapuente, examined how male and female public managers show attitudinal differences toward innovation in the public sector.

The overall objective of this project is to identify novel drug candidates that are capable of slowing down the progression of neurodegeneration in the subset of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with overt mitochondrial dysfunction. Multimodal phenotypic characterisation of cohorts of monogenic PD…

In this thesis, two potential therapeutic targets for diabetic nephropathy were dentified and investigated. First, we show that glomerular clusterin is upregulated in diabetic nephropathy and demonstrated that recombinant clusterin protein can protect the podocytes against oxidative stress in vitro.…

Leiden University researchers and their collaborators report the development of new research frameworks that use day-to-day smartphone behavior gathered from a large sample of healthy people to help understand aging, and how aging alters with epilepsy and stroke. These reports occupy two back-to-back…

The emergence of complex diseases resulting from abnormal cell-cell signaling and the spread of infectious diseases caused by pathogens are significant threats to humanity. Unraveling the dynamic mechanisms underlying cell-cell signaling and infectious disease spreading is crucial for effective disease…

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

To make the right clinical decisions or develop effective diagnostic tests and treatments, it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms of a condition or behavior.

How to identify patients at risk of developing devastating, metastatic disease and facilitate the development of personalised treatment for prostate cancer patients?

We know this, but we don’t act on it: eat healthily, move more, address our stress levels and sleep well. Internist and Professor of Diabetology Hanno Pijl is fascinated by the effect that a healthy lifestyle can have on health. He researches how this lifestyle is achievable and satisfying, for patients…

Promotor: H.J.M. de Groot, Co-Promotor: A. Alia

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink, Co-promotor: Prof. dr. A.H. Meijer

The research described in this thesis combines the latest insights in lysosomal function with lysosome centred cell signalling.

On 12 January 2023 ms. Nor Ismah successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Punching Back is a detailed ethnographic study that demonstrates that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

Sasse, van Breen, Spears & Gordijn demonstrated an anger gap in response to sexism which was larger for women than for men and found evidence that expressed anger was associated with instrumental concerns.

This article investigates the efforts of influential Turkish Muslim civil society actors to amplify the voices of Muslim women in the Netherlands.

On 18 May 2022, Annelien Bouland defended her thesis 'Please give me my divorce: an ethnography of Muslim women and the law in Senegal'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Prof.dr. M.M.A. Kaag and Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs.

What was the relationship between women and modern media in different parts of Asia in the 20th century? Under what historical and social conditions did women achieve prominence in popular music in Asia?

This book project explores the changing dynamics of marriage and family life in postwar Japan based on an examination of the life histories of single mothers.

Mei-Wen Chen defended her thesis on 29 June 2016

Health workers have always sought ways to fight disease in vulnerable groups in the population. It is now clear that such research also benefits more prosperous countries. African worm infections and innovative thermometers have shown Leiden researchers how to fight diseases of affluence and keep health…

We aim to gain a better understanding of the natural disease progression of ALS in order to improve clinical trial design and analysis and to support drug discovery and clinical development of new drugs.

This book presents the results of a research about the Islamic courts of Cianjur in West Java, and Bulukumba in South Sulawesi and the role they play in local divorce practices.

This project is part of the Next Generation ImmunoDermatology (NGID) consortium, which focuses on the comprehensive phenotyping of six different immune-mediated inflammatory skin conditions. A common factor contributing to these diseases is a dysfunctional skin barrier. The skin barrier function is…

Psychologist Bernadet Klaassens initiated a large fMRI study on the effect of drugs on brain networks in aging and Alzheimer's disease. It generated a unique data set and insight into a new method to develop drugs for patients with Alzheimer's.

Which brain cell does what, when Parkinson's disease arises? It won't be long before this jigsaw is solved piece by piece. Ahmed Mahfouz, computational biologist, combines bio-knowledge from Leiden with algorithms from Delft and is getting closer to finding the key.

The aim of this project is to explore the use of statistical interaction models to quantify cross-omics and omics-drug interactions in large-scale clinical and experimental datasets

A growing amount of literature is being devoted to interrogating gendered dynamics in both violent extremism and terrorism, contributing to the integration of international and feminist security. This includes how such dynamics can shape differences in the motivations and participation of women and…

Prediction of human (CNS) target site concentrations in health and disease In the vision of Prof. de Lange we will only be able to predict human (central nervous system, CNS) target site concentrations and effects if we perform systematic, condition-dependent, integrative, and strictly quantitative…

In this paper, the authors study how individual and country-level variables interact in affecting political gender attitudes in Europe.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: T.R. van Andel

In the early modern period women played a prominent role in crime. At times they even made up half of all defendants. Female criminality was a typically urban phenomenon. Why do we find so many women before the Dutch criminal courts?

Rebecca Tompkins defended her thesis on 21 March 2019

On Wednesday 14 February 2024 Yorum Beekman successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

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.

PhD defence

Excavations at Geleen-Janskamerveld 1990/1991

The progressive loss and degeneration of dopaminergic neurons is a major pathological hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD). The onset and progression of PD can be triggered by multiple risk factors, for instance, genetic mutation, environmental exposure, and aging.

This project compares and contrasts how and why several Turkish and Iranian women were compelled to participate in leftist guerilla movements in the 1960s and 1970s.