Dr L Hopcroft, Dr G Sanguinetti
No more applications being accepted
Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
MRC DTP in Precision Medicine
Up to 35 fully funded studentship positions are available across the University of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Our next intake will be for PhD projects commencing September 2018.
The Precision Medicine Doctoral Training Programme (DTP) offers PhD with Integrated Study studentships funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), The University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow. Hosted by the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the University of Glasgow and the Karolinska Institute, this prestigious programme provides PhD research training alongside taught courses over four years of study and welcomed its first cohort of students in September 2016.
This Doctoral Training Programme focuses on training PhD students in key MRC skills priorities in quantitative skills (mathematics, statistics, computation, and developing digital excellence) as applied to variety of data sources (from ‘omics’ to health records), and interdisciplinary skills including imaging and stratified medicine.
Supervisors:
Dr Lisa Hopcroft
Dr Guido Sanguinetti
Dr Simon Rogers
Dr Helen Wheadon
Project Summary:
Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) is caused by a population of oncogene expressing stem cells resident in the bone marrow (BM) of patients. There is increasing evidence that these leukaemic stem cells (LSC) disrupt the BM microenvironment or “niche” to maintain the disease, and that this is achieved through altered ligand/receptor signaling between particular cellular populations. The overarching objective of this exciting interdisciplinary project is to identify which interactions are deregulated in the leukaemic BM, thereby identifying novel therapeutic interventions for the clinic.
The DTP candidate will develop, optimize and test novel computational methodologies to construct a probabilistic intercellular signaling network between relevant cellular populations in the normal BM niche using multiple, publicly-available scRNA-seq datasets. They will then incorporate expression data generated from primary CML samples to assess how this network is perturbed in the presence of LSC and ultimately identify potential targets for novel therapeutic intervention in this disease. Of particular interest is a stratified patient cohort exhibiting a poor response to current treatments. This exciting and clinically focused project will offer the DTP candidate the opportunity to gain both computational and experimental skills, and will be supervised by an interdisciplinary team between the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Funding Notes
Start: 10 September 2018
Qualifications criteria: Applicants applying for a MRC DTP in Precision Medicine studentship must have obtained, or will soon obtain, a first or upper-second class UK honours degree or equivalent non-UK qualifications, in an appropriate science/technology area.
Residence criteria: The MRC DTP in Precision Medicine grant provides tuition fees and stipend of at least £14,553 (RCUK rate 2017/18) for UK and EU nationals that meet all required eligibility criteria.
Full eligibility details are available: http://www.mrc.ac.uk/skills-careers/studentships/studentship-guidance/student-eligibility-requirements/
Enquiries regarding programme: [Email Address Removed]
Details on 'How to Apply' are available here: http://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvls/graduateschool/precisionmedicine/howtoapply/
MRC DTP in Precision Medicine website: http://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvls/graduateschool/precisionmedicine/