What we do
It is our mission to unravel the molecular details of the working of cells in their normal function and the perturbed functioning in diseased cells. We help translate our knowledge and technologies to clinical practice.
Research
Our common goal is simple and easily described, but the road we take and focus points we have in our science are very diverse. Ranging from virus biology to genome editing, diabetes and oncogenic signaling, our scope of interest covers a wide area of life science.
Affiliated labs
We collaborate with some of the worlds leading institutes in all field of science. Some of the labs we affiliate with and their leaders that hold positions at our department are:
Prof. Hidde Ploegh appointed as Jon J. van Rood-scholar ( Harvard Medical School, United States of America)
Prof. Brenda Schulman appointed as LUF-Boerhaave Visiting Professor (Max-Planck Institute, Martinsried, Germany)
News
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Alfred Vertegaal appointed professor of Cell Biology
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Anti-smoking program for adolescents in the news
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TOP-grant for research on the collaboration between two signalling proteins
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Eurolife exchange grant for Dr. Kurakula
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THE LEIDEN TEACHING PRIZE 2018 AWARDED TO ROELAND DIRKS
Cases
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PhD graduation Vera Kemp
Not all viruses make you ill. Some viruses can even kill cancer cells. Vera Kemp defended her thesis on february 7th 2019. Her work focuses on reovirus, an example of such an oncolytic virus.
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Neutralized, but not inactivated
Viruses have shown renewed promise in the treatment of cancer, after new research has shown they retain their cancer-killing ability even when injected into the bloodstream. It is believed that the human body’s normal immune response neutralizes viruses that are injected into the bloodstream to try to destroy tumors during oncolytic virus therapy. In a new study investigating reovirus, scientists found that cells in the blood can reactivate the virus as it travels to the tumor site, allowing it to retain its ability to destroy the cancer cells.
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Observing endogenously tagged fluorescent proteins
Fluorescence microscopy is an essential tool to study cellular processes in living cells. But studying proteins at endogenous expression levels creates a technical challenge due to the lower expression levels compared to those of ectopically (over)-expressed fluorescent proteins. Here we will have a look at how spinning disk microscopy alleviates these challenges.
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