Dr S Broughton, Dr N Dawson
No more applications being accepted
Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
About the Project
The Faculty of Health and Medicine is pleased to offer a number of competitive scholarships to include fees plus a stipend to the equivalent of RCUK rates for outstanding UK/EU and overseas students wishing to undertake full time doctoral research in any Department within the Faculty of Health and Medicine.
Schizophrenia is a common disorder characterised by hallucinations, delusions, mood disturbances and cognitive deficits. The drugs currently used to treat schizophrenia, the antipsychotics, relieve only the hallucinations. Thus there is a great unmet need for new drugs to treat the disorder. The cognitive deficits may results from accelerated brain ageing, which may also relate to the early mortality of schizophrenia patients, but this hypothesis is yet to be adequately tested. The short lifespan, genetic tractability and evolutionarily conserved neurobiology of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) make it a particularly useful model organism for studying the mechanisms of brain ageing.
A number of genetic risk factors for schizophrenia have been identified and several key aspects of neurobiological dysfunction in the disorder, including NMDA receptor hypofunction and dopamine system hyperfunction, are supported. In this project, using a range of genetic and pharmacological Drosophila models you will elucidate how these risk factors impact on lifespan, sleep and behavioural senescence as phenotypic markers of brain ageing. Given the established role of insulin signalling in ageing, and evidence suggesting that insulin signalling is altered in schizophrenia, you will characterise, at the molecular level, insulin signalling in these models. This work will elucidate the potential contribution of altered insulin signalling to brain ageing in schizophrenia, determine whether insulin signalling pathways represents a valid target for the treatment of the disorder, and establish Drosophila as a useful model organism in schizophrenia drug discovery.
Students wishing to apply for this project should complete the Expression of Interest Form (this can be downloaded from http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/shm/study/doctoral_study/studentships/) and send this directly to the first named supervisor. The closing date for Expressions of Interest is 6 March 2015.
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