Dr A Smith, Prof A Cooper
No more applications being accepted
Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
A kidney transplant can transform the life of someone with kidney failure, restoring them to better health. However, patients have to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the new kidney, and these essential drugs increase the risk of serious infections and cancer. The immune system of a kidney transplant patient has to be maintained at a very precise balance between over-activity, which may lead to rejection, and under-activity and infection risk. Regular exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle for everyone, including people with a kidney transplant. Some patients enjoy doing a lot of exercise and taking part in sport, which is important to them as a way of celebrating their health gains. However, kidney transplant patients often worry about possible negative effects of exercise on their new kidney. In particular, they often ask how exercise might affect the delicate balance between the immune system and the immunosuppressive drugs.
Our group will be carrying out a 3 year clinical trial of different supervised exercise programmes for patients with a kidney transplant, comparing high-intensity interval training with conventional moderate intensity continuous exercise. In this project, the student will investigate the impact of acute exercise sessions and 8 weeks of regular training on the phenotypes and activation status of circulating immune and inflammatory cells populations.
The student will learn clinical exercise physiology and laboratory investigation of immune and inflammatory function including flow cytometry, cell culture and molecular biology techniques. The student will split their time between our clinical exercise research facility at Leicester General Hospital and state-of-the-art cellular immunology research labs at the University of Leicester. The wider study is a collaboration between the University of Leicester and the School of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at Loughborough University, and the student will have the opportunity to engage with all the academic partners.
The start date for this Studentship is 1st April 2017
Funding Notes
This is a 3 year fully funded PhD studentship.Candidates should have a first or upper second class degree in a relevant biological subject and meet the University of Leicester entrance requirements - see:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/research/degrees/how-to-apply/academic-requirements
UK and EU students who meet the UK residency requirements will be eligible for the studentship.
The stipend will be at the current standard UK Research Council rate (currently £14,296 pa).
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