This project is driven by the need to find new treatments that can repair damaged lungs. Our group have been studying lung inflammation and airway damage in Cystic Fibrosis, a life limiting genetic lung disease for the past decade and have recently made key discoveries related to dysregulated repair mechanisms in the lung that are relevant to many other lung diseases such as COPD. We now want to establish a model to interrogate these in an ex-vivo system employing primary human cells from the airways of patients and healthy controls. To this end we will establish and validate an ex-vivo living airway model in a bio-reactor platform that allows damage and repair to be monitored real-time and at a granular level. We will expand the present platform of air liquid interface culture to include tissue matrix, fibroblasts and a vascular interface. Furthermore, we will incorporate nanosensors into this platform to measure the process of damage and repair as it happens by measuring changes in pH and redox potential, 2 physical readouts that may be important in damaged and repairing tissue (see schematic figure 1). We will use Raman spectroscopy to measure signals from the nanosensors while cell culture is in progress and then compare these outputs to biological data such as markers of inflammation. This work will continue an effective collaboration between clinical science and chemistry that already has a track record in using a cross-disciplinary approach to answer fundamental questions about the biology of CF.
The aims of this PhD project are two-fold: 1. Incorporate sensors into an established airway culture system and validate pH and redox measurements real-time. 2. Develop methods to make multiplexed measurements of redox potential and pH in the context of injury, inflammation, resolution and repair, correlating these to measurements of inflammation, tissue damage and repair after epithelial challenge with bacteria. This project will provide training in airways biology and biological spectroscopy and nanosensor synthesis from 2 labs with a track record of supporting PhD students to the completion of projects on time with published output.
Funding information and Application Process:
This 4 year PhD project is part of a competition funded by EASTBIO BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP)
This opportunity is open to UK and international students and provides funding to cover stipend and UK level tuition fees. The University of Edinburgh will cover the difference between home and international fees meaning that the EASTBIO DTP will offer fully-funded studentships to all appointees. However there is a cap on the number of international students the DTP can recruit. It is therefore important for us to know from the outset which fees status category applicants will fall under when formally applying for entry to our university.
Please refer to UKRI and Annex B of the UKRI Training Grant Terms and Conditions for full eligibility criteria.
Informal enquiries should be addressed to Dr Gray. To apply, please send a cover letter outlining your previous research experience and reasons for applying, alongside an up-to-date CV to [Email Address Removed]
Download and complete our Equality,Diversity and Inclusion survey and then fill in the EASTBIO Application Form and submit it to [Email Address Removed]
Send the EASTBIOReference Form to your two academic/professional referees, and ask them to submit it to [Email Address Removed] before the application deadline.
We anticipate that our first set of interviews will be held 7th – 11th February 2022 with awards made in the following week.
If you have further queries about the application/recruitment process please contact [Email Address Removed]
The research group is located in the University of Edinburgh Centre for Inflammation Research; a world-class research environment at the interface between biological and medical science, with multidisciplinary groupings focused on inflammation, infection, disease and repair. The Centre is based within the Edinburgh Medical School in the outstanding facilities of the Queen’s Medical Research Institute at the site of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh hospital, maximising future translational opportunities.
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