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Here are a selection of potential projects, check back in the new year to view our final confirmed list of available projects and to apply.
Fibrosis is the pathological end-product of a tissue’s response to chronic damage/inflammation including cancer, thus can affect most organ systems and represents a major medical problem. It is defined by dramatic changes in tissue composition and organisation, often including local and global alignment of the extracellular matrix (ECM) that affects...
Supervisors:
Mark Wallace, Andrea Serio
Understanding how human neurons transition from axonal elongation to synaptic establishment is critical for modelling neurodegenerative diseases like ALS. This project combines Biomolecular Engineering (synthetic membrane channels and synaptogenic proteins) with Biomaterial Engineering (micropatterned growth substrates) to address the Programmable Microenvironments challenge area. We will engineer Artificial Synaptic Cells (ASCs)...
Supervisors:
Julien Bergeron, Michelle Peckham
Recent development in protein engineering now permits to rapidly and cheaply develop proteins that interact with specific targets, with numerous potential applications, including research, diagnostics, and treatment of diseases. However, a major limitation for the clinical use of such designed proteins, is the requirement for them to cross the cell...
Supervisors:
Leone Rossetti, Matthias Krause
Collective cell migration underpins development, wound repair and cancer invasion. In these settings, cells move through extracellular environments that often contain aligned features, for example collagen fibres surrounding tumours. How cells combine these structural cues with biochemical signalling and force generation is still unclear. This project will engineer programmable microenvironments...
Supervisors:
David Brockwell, Lorna Dougan
Biological microenvironments are inherently complex in Nature. Structural and mechanical hierarchy and compositional heterogeneity are ubiquitous in biological systems and play a key role on the functionality of the living system. Unfortunately, this complexity is also important pathological conditions, where cells in a tumour microenvironment are spatially localised and possess...
Supervisors:
Alex Taylor, Anna Schurich
Life uses a limited set of chemical building blocks to form its genetic material; what if molecules could be designed and evolved using a broader range of backbones than DNA or RNA? In our lab, we use test-tube evolution of synthetic XNA polymers to explore this question. In principle, XNAs...
Supervisors:
Aleksej Zelezniak, Benedikt Berninger
Neuron loss in injury and neurodegenerative disease creates an urgent need for new regenerative strategies. Lineage reprogramming of glial cells is a promising approach, but current methods struggle to generate clinically relevant neuronal subtypes. This project combines biomolecular engineering with AI-driven regulatory modelling to design improved reprogramming strategies. We will...
Novel drug formulations aim to control the location and timing of drug release for optimal therapeutic benefit. This project will engineer cancer nanomedicines that control drug release in response to metabolites in the local tissue microenvironment. Vesicles will be assembled encapsulating anticancer drugs with appropriate enzymes that process metabolites into...
Supervisors:
Miao Guo, Yansha Deng
The gut microbiome forms one of the most intricate programmable microenvironments in the human body, where nutrient-dependent metabolic fluxes and microbial interactions generate signals that modulate epithelial barrier function, innate immunity, and T-cell differentiation. These immune-relevant metabolites e.g. short-chain fatty acids constitute a biochemical language linking microbial ecology to host...
Supervisors:
Jeremy Green, Chris Lorenz
Tissue morphogenesis involves collective cell movements such as convergent extension (CE): cells rearranging by intercalation to narrow and lengthen tissue. CE forms many structures (the main body axis, the inner ear, kidney tubules, long bones, etc.). Gastruloids are cell aggregates that self-organise, modelling embryonic symmetry-breaking and undergoing CE, but this...
Supervisors:
David Brockwell, Lorna Dougan
Protein hydrogels (cross-linked proteins forming a self supporting hydrated network) have diverse applications that for medicine include drug delivery, tissue engineering and wound healing. The functionality of protein hydrogels can be hugely extended beyond that of passive scaffold if made from folded proteins, opening the door to signalling, catalysis and...
Supervisors:
Max Ryadnov, Mark Wallace
Intracellular pathogens infect and multiply in human cells. Conventional antibiotics are of little help and particularly against dormant bacteria that are phenotypically tolerant to antibiotic treatments. Compounded by the looming “silent pandemic” of antimicrobial resistance, this challenge prompts the development of innovative approaches for delivering antimicrobial interventions inside human cells...
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a highly complex, spatially organised scaffold whose architecture is a defining signature of both healthy tissue function and pathological states such as fibrosis and cancer invasion. Yet despite its central role, we still lack a mechanistic understanding of how cells sense changes in ECM organisation...
Supervisors:
Tim Nott, Mark Wallace
Living cells organise biochemical reactions through specialised internal compartments called organelles. This PhD project will engineer synthetic organelles to enhance the capabilities of future generations of gene-expressing synthetic cells. These engineered organelles will generate chemically distinct microenvironments with tuneable properties, offering new levels of control over synthetic cell behaviour. The...
Supervisors:
Mahvash Tavassoli, Manuel Mueller
Gene therapies hold immense potential, yet their safety is limited by off-target expression and insufficient control over therapeutic gene regulation. This project aims to engineer a tumour-selective, autoregulatory expression vector integrating promoter specificity with feedback self-limitation. By combining molecular biology, chemical engineering, and computational modelling, the research will develop a...
Engineered nucleic acids (xeno nucleic acids, XNAs) use chemical configurations not found in nature to extend their structural and functional scope, and are increasingly a source of novel nanostructures, -devices and drugs. In this project, you will study XNAs designed with specific enzymatic and high-affinity binding functionalities and elucidate structure-function...
This 4-year PhD project aims to engineer sustainable nanofiber scaffolds from alternative proteins for advanced mucosal tissue generation. Using electrospinning and surface modification, we will create biocompatible, adhesive scaffolds that support fibroblast growth and differentiation, forming a collagen-rich matrix. Co-culturing fibroblasts with mucin-producing epithelial cells will enable the development of...
Supervisors:
Ciro Chiappini, Panicos Shangaris
Sickle cell disease (SCD) remains a major global health burden, with limited curative options and significant morbidity beginning early in life. Advances in non-invasive prenatal testing now offer a unique opportunity to intervene before the onset of irreversible disease. This project aims to engineer next-generation ionisable lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) capable...
Supervisors:
Simon Connell, Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso
This project combines multidisciplinary approaches, bridging biology and soft polymer physics, to deliver new biocompatible synthetic systems as programmable environments for applications in drug delivery and tissue engineering. These synthetic scaffolds will be designed using beta-glucan components, naturally found in the cell walls of plants and microbes. These scaffolds will...
Supervisors:
Robert Köchl, Robert Salmond
Human health faces constant challenges from environmental insults like infections, cancer, and tissue damage, with the immune system playing a key role in responding to these threats. It has become evident that immune responses are not only shaped by ligand-receptor interactions but also by biomechanical cues from the tissue environment....
Supervisors:
Mark Wallace, Max Ryadnov
This project is inspired by the pioneering technology developed by PartitionBio (an external partner of the project) for targeted gene delivery, dubbed ‘bubbles’. The bubbles are engineered peptide-based systems that are assembled using liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) and enter mammalian cells by fusing with their membranes via micropinocytosis. The bubbles...
Supervisors:
Maria R Sasi Conte, Agi Grigoriadis
RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) engage with RNA to control fundamental cellular homeostasis and perturbations in RBP–RNA networks are increasingly recognised as key contributors to cancer. With the increased understanding of RBP function in cancer onset and development, efforts are turning towards engineering RBPs with new specificities and activities to control and...
The skin architecture and biomechanics change dramatically in aging, wound repair and scarring, yet most insights come from traditional histology and disconnected molecular biology. State-of-the-art, label-free, analytical techniques (e.g. X-ray and Raman scattering) provide biomechanical and chemical tissue characterisation. Small and wide angle X-ray scattering can reveal nanoscale structural features,...
Supervisors:
Thomas Chamberlain, Graeme Stasiuk
Healthcare Nanomaterials have significant application in delivering therapeutic for a variety of diseases from cancer to vaccines. The mode of entry into the cell to give the biggest payload in an effective manner is not yet realised. Currently through liposome or surface protein interaction and endocytosis are non-specific and slow...
Supervisors:
Richard Bayliss, Jessica Kwok
Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are key regulators of neuronal development, controlling processes such as proliferation, differentiation, and migration. Despite their importance, the precise timing and spatial dynamics of RTK signalling remain poorly understood, partly due to limitations of genetic and pharmacological tools. This project will apply cutting-edge engineering biology approaches...
Supervisors:
Manuel Mueller, Mahvash Tavassoli
The tumor suppressor protein p53 plays a central role in preventing cancer. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) control p53’s anticancer response. Conversely, p53 is inactivated in most cancers, either by mutagenesis or through the expression of viral oncoproteins. How viral suppressors of p53 and activating PTMs vie for control over p53 signalling...
Supervisors:
Yvonne Nyathi, Rivka Isaacson
Cells must decide the fate of every newly made membrane protein: fold it, insert it into membranes, or degrade it. These triage decisions shape protein homeostasis, disease susceptibility, and the yield of biologics. In this PhD, you will engineer programmable intracellular microenvironments that control this decision. By harnessing SGTA—a cytosolic...
Supervisors:
Yvonne Nyathi, Rivka Isaacson
Steroid hormone receptors (SHRs) are an important and complex family of transcription factors whose hormone binding triggers nuclear translocation and activation of specific programmes of gene expression that facilitate different cellular processes depending on bodily location, external environment and many other factors. A huge variety of cancers come about in...
Supervisors:
Michelle Peckham, Elisabeth Ehler
The cells that make up the contractile tissue of the heart, the cardiomyocytes, need two multiprotein complexes to do their job, the myofibrils, which mediate contraction and the intercalated discs, the key site for electromechanical linkage between cells. These multiprotein complexes are strongly affected during heart disease. Understanding why this...
Supervisors:
Michael Webb, Richard Bayliss
Cells communicate with each other via complex chains of signalling events in which individual post-translational modifications of one protein stimulate modification of the next protein in a chain. Individual proteins can be modified combinatorially leading to an exquisite variety to subtly different responses. Understanding and reengineering these responses requires us...
In vitro models to investigate striated muscle function are of increasing biological and medical significance. However, current cell culture systems and microtissue models lack reproducibly and maturity owing to various factors. Some of their limitations is the lack of 3D spatial context of the microtissue including: paracrine signalling from cellular...
Supervisors:
Driton Vllasaliu, Maya Thanou
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nanoscale particles that transport biomolecules between cells, with remarkable ability to cross biological barriers. EVs have significant therapeutic potential due to inherent therapeutic properties and/or drug delivery potential. EVs outperform lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) in cellular delivery of RNA. To fulfil their potential as future advanced and...
Supervisors:
James Hindley, Gilbert Fruhwirth
Diseases generate microenvironments with differing physical, chemical, and biological properties compared to healthy tissues. In cancer, the tumour microenvironment (TME) promotes progression and therapy resistance of the most advanced therapeutics including ‘smart’ nanomedicines and engineered cell-based therapies. While nanomedicines are limited in tunability of function, cell-based therapies can be engineered...
Supervisors:
Mark Green, David Jayne
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in the UK, with 100 people diagnosed every day. Surgery is the mainstay of treatment for colorectal cancer with around 30,000 operations performed each year in the NHS. Around 50% of patients will be cured by surgery, but 10-15% will develop...
Supervisors:
Sarah Barry, Ryan Seipke
Antibiotics are the foundation of modern healthcare. Without them, standard surgeries, cancer treatment and modern maternity care are impossible. The antimicrobial resistance crisis continues to grow as antibiotic development stagnates. Technology to produce new antibiotics and derivatise existing ones are rapidly needed. Our traditional source of antibiotics has been microorganisims...
Perineuronal nets (PNNs) are extracellular structures that stabilise synapses and restrict neuroplasticity in the adult brain. Modulating PNNs can promote neuronal regeneration and functional recovery, but efficient delivery of macromolecular therapeutics like siRNA into PNN neurons remains a major challenge. This project will use engineering biology to reprogram the non-toxic...