Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. The most important risk factor for developing this disease is high cholesterol levels in the blood.

In Renaissance Florence, humanists wrote Latin poems fashioning their city as the new Rome, and members of the Medici family as Roman rulers. How can we explain this practice?

To explore the potential of marine microorganisms as producers of novel antimicrobial agents and as bioprotectants in aqua- and agriculture, using an integrative, ecology-based strategy for bioprospecting.

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).

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper

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

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

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.

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…

Timo Slootweg, associate professor at he department Philosophy of Law, published a chapter about Paul Scholten in

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.…

As part of Nexus 1492 Subproject 4: A Future for Diverse Caribbean Heritages, which seeks to shed light on how local communities interpret and engage with heritage in the present day, this doctoral study aims to gain insight into how indigenous heritage is represented in the school curriculum for social…

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 Caribbean before Columbus is a new synthesis of the region’s insular history. It combines the results of the authors’ 55 years of archaeological research on almost every island in the three archipelagoes with that of their numerous colleagues and collaborators.

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…

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.

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.

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.

The goal of our research is to analyze Natorp’s redefinition of the distinction between intuitions and concepts in relation to his conception of the method of philosophy. We will exhibit the connection between the way in which Natorp redefines the Kantian dichotomy and his conception of the method of…

The following dissertation reconstructs Paul Natorp's philosophical psychology. It argues that psychology's main object is the lived experience of concrete subjects, understood as a transcendental structure of logical-reflexive conditions for the recognition, appropriation, and evaluation of objective…

A mosaic is the only image which can do justice to museums in the Caribbean. They are as diverse and plentiful as the many communities which form the cores of their organizations and the hearts of their missions. These profoundly social museums adopt participatory practices and embark on community engagement…

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 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

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…

Since 2014 church organ player Paul Houdijk has been working on his PhD project on the musical and aesthetic developments of the Dutch 19th-century church organ builder Michael Maarschalkerweerd.

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.

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

On Monday 26 February the terrible news reached us that our gifted former Egyptology student – and former student assistant at the Leids Papyrologisch Instituut – Juan Archidona Ramírez had succumbed to cancer.

It was with great sadness that on 17 May 2021 we learned of the death of our dear colleague Paul Valk. Paul died from the consequences of COVID-19, having been diagnosed with coronavirus over three weeks ago. Soon after this he was admitted to intensive care, where he was kept in an induced coma on…

Promotores: H.A. Udo De Haes, P.M. Brakefield

Currently, several successful vaccines are available. However, for pathogens with a highly variable genetic composition, and for which serum IgG antibodies are not a useful correlate of protection, effective vaccines are yet to be developed.