State-of-the-art in vitro and in vivo model systems, including high-containment facilities, supporting mechanistic research and therapeutic development under fully compliant conditions.
Central Animal Facility
The Central Animal Facility provides state-of-the-art housing and care for laboratory animals and supports ethically regulated in vivo studies across different research domains and houses mainly SPF rodents according to FELASA standards. It facilitates experimental design, model development and compliance with the highest animal welfare standards, the facility is internationally oriented and works together with several external parties.
Biosafety Level 3 Facility and DM-III mouse unit
The BSL-3 Facility supports high-containment research on pathogenic viruses and bacteria with fully equipped laboratories and safety systems. This enables complex studies with class-3 infectious agents, including airborne and high-risk human pathogens. The associated DM-III unit facilitates high-containment mouse studies with the same type of pathogens, for example in the context of vaccination and drug efficacy studies.
Leiden hiPSC Center
The hiPSC Center offers the generation of high-quality, research grade human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines as well as their genetic modification with CRISPR/Cas9 to generate isogenic controls, knock-out and reporter hiPSCs. We also have several extensively characterized ‘control’ hiPSCs from ‘healthy’ donors available. During our annual training courses participants can learn how to maintain undifferentiated hiPSCs and about basic principles of differentiation. Finally we provide protocols developed in-house for differentiation of hiPSCs into various cardiovascular cell types and immune cells.
