Preclinical Respiratory Drug Development.

A unique opportunity exists to apply for a generous PhD Scholarship (40,000 A$ PA tax free) to be trained in preclinical drug development.

New drugs are needed for asthma and COPD. These diseases affect around 3 million Australians. Not only are they a considerable source of morbidity and mortality, the economic costs are substantial comprising $1.5 billion of annual direct costs to the public health system.

In your PhD you will contribute to the preclinical development program of novel respiratory therapeutics. What this means is that you will be able to choose a novel drug that has been developed by medicinal chemists at our industry partner, or a compound which our research labs have developed. You will then choose which in-vitro and in-vivo models to use (we will help you, and have established most if not all of the in-vitro and in-vivo models already). You will then choose which analytical techniques you need to analyse your data. These could include the latest cutting-edge techniques RNAseq, metabolomics/proteomics, superhigh resolution microscopy, but will also include standard techniques such as qPCR, western blotting and ELSIAs.

In this PhD project you will work in labs at UTS and the Woolcock Institute of Medical research, and in our industry partners labs based in Sydney. All the labs are physically close together. You will be trained and mentored by leading academics and leaders in industry. Our research group has around 20 people including several honours, PhD students and postdocs.

Ultimately, your PhD will train you in all aspects of commercial preclinical drug development. This is an area of growth within Australia, as most pharmaceutical R&D is currently based overseas.