lifETIME
EPSRC-SFI Centre for Doctoral Training in Engineered Tissues for Discovery, Industry and Medicine
The CDT in Engineered Tissues for Discovery, Industry and Medicine is a partnership between the University of Glasgow, University of Birmingham, Aston University and National University of Ireland Galway. The CDT will train the next generation of interdisciplinary (engineering, chemistry, physics, maths and biology) leaders in developing in vitro tissues, sensing and diagnostics to develop humanised in vitro systems to drive better drug screening.
Global challenge
There are major problems with current drug discovery:
- Genomic and high-throughput technologies are driving the volume of new drug leads, but despite this volume, the number of successes has remained static; there is a productivity crisis.
- Overly simple in vitro screens and non-human animal models are not predicting fails and so approximately 40% of new drug fails are discovered during human trials.
The lifETIME CDT thus focuses on development of non-animal technologies to improve predictive power of pre-clinical drug screens and thus drive medicines discovery.
Benefits of joining our programme
The benefit of this programme is that we have partners from industry (Pharma, contract research organisations, small enterprises), the NHS, regulation and charity organisations who will work with our students. This CDT is based at the Universities of Glasgow, Birmingham, Aston and Galway, as partners we work collaboratively to create a national cohort of new talent to drive this sector. This cohort will support each other throughout their professional careers working to bring better health to the UK and beyond.
Students who join this programme will find homes in dynamic labs in the host universities and have the opportunity for travel around the UK / Ireland and the rest of the world. If you want to perform exciting science, become a leader in the field, develop a network of like-minded talent and thus grow the UK drug discovery sector, then you should apply for this programme.