Medicine: Fully Funded UK Multiple Sclerosis Society PhD Scholarship: Oxysterols in Progressive Multiple Sclerosis

This scholarship is funded by UK Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Subject areas: neuroscience, biochemistry, chemistry

Start date: January 2019 or April 2019

There is an urgent need to identify neuroprotective and reparative pathways to benefit people with progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).

The project will look at the role cholesterols play in progressive MS. Oxysterols (cholesterol and its biosynthetic products) are important for life but excessive cholesterol is linked to an increased chance of multiple sclerosis. The MS Society is currently supporting an important clinical trial looking at the effect of cholesterol busting drugs (statins) on disability in people with progressive MS, but we still do not know how these drugs might be helping people with MS.

We have developed a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the accurate detection of oxysterols. Using this method, we have described how oxysterol pathways are dysregulated in a range of neurodegenerative disorders. During this project you will describe the localisation and levels of brain oxysterols in demyelinated MS lesions, identify the oxysterols discoverable in statin-treated MS blood samples and test the capacity of oxysterols to modulate neuroprotection and repair in culture. The work will allow us to better understand how statins might be benefiting people with progressive MS by uncovering molecular pathways that are changed in this condition.

This is an exciting project that addresses an important biological question. You will join a thriving and successful research team and learn skills that will set you up for a career in biomedical research. The project will be based at the Institute of Life Sciences at the Swansea University Medical School. The project is in collaboration with Swansea University Professors William J. Giffiths and Yuqin Wang.

Please note we reserve the right to close applications for this scholarship before the application deadline.

Eligibility
Candidate must have a first class honours degree or master’s degree in biomedical sciences, neuroscience, chemistry or a relevant subject.

Meaningful period of laboratory experience and first-hand experience with tissue immunostaining, analytical chemistry and/or cell culture are desirable but not essential.

Due to funding restrictions, this scholarship is open to UK/EU candidates only.