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New NC3Rs PhD studentships announced

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Fifteen new PhD studentships totalling £1.35 million have been awarded by the NC3Rs across leading UK institutions for exceptional 3Rs research and training projects.

Of the 15 awards, three are co-funded with the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to support 3Rs training and development in cardiovascular research. Two of the co-funded projects will study atherosclerosis using either cell-based approaches or zebrafish embryos instead of commonly used mouse models. The third project will create tissue-engineered artificial blood vessels to look at the molecular mechanisms underlying blood clotting.

To date we have committed £9.6 million to 102 awards under the Studentship scheme, including seven joint BHF-NC3Rs awards. For more information on the past awards, including case studies, read our PhD Studentship Review.

The awards are made directly to the principal investigators. Interested students should contact the respective supervisors. For full details and how to apply, visit the studentship vacancies page.

Awarded studentships (in alphabetical order):

Dr Elizabeth Ballou, University of Birmingham, Replacing animal models in fungal pathogen research: An in vitro Titan virulence assay for the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans

Dr Andreas Bender, University of Cambridge, Moving the Adverse Outcome Pathways Framework towards Practical Utility by Integrating Compound Profiling Data and Using Deep Learning

Dr Karl Butterworth, Queen's University Belfast, Refinement of soft tissue targeting and alignment protocols is small animal radiotherapy using an injectable fiducial marker

Professor Paul Evans, University of Sheffield, Using zebrafish embryos to identify genes that protect against atherosclerosis (joint award with the BHF)

Dr Trenton Garner, Zoological Society of London Institute of Zoology, Refining, reducing and replacing non-model amphibian experiments on amphibian infectious diseases

Dr Alan Harper, Keele University, Recreating thrombosis models using tissue-engineered arterial constructs: A novel method to reduce and replace mice used in platelet research (joint award with the BHF)

Professor Gareth Jenkins, Swansea University, Developing an in vitro repeat-dose test as a 3Rs approach to detect non-genotoxic carcinogens

Dr Jan-Ulrich Kreft, University of Birmingham, Developing and validating a computational model of the gut microbiota-mucosa interactions to replace and reduce animal experiments

Professor Paul Langford, Imperial College London, Galleria mellonella - a novel infection model for Mycobacterium tuberculosis aimed at reducing the number of animals in experimentation

Professor Anthony Maxwell, John Innes Centre, Insects as models to study the impact of antibiotics and microbiota therapies on the human gut microbiome: reducing the use of animals in research

Dr Mariya Moosajee, University College London, Generating in vitro human optic vesicles to dissect the genetic modifiers affecting ocular maldevelopment

Professor Charles Tyler, University of Exeter, An alternative approach for assessing drug-induced seizures, using non-protected larval zebrafish

Dr Simon Waddell, University of Sussex, Characterising Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the human lung; developing new tools for antimicrobial drug discovery through the SH-TBL clinical trial

Dr Stephen White, Manchester Metropolitan University, Development of E-Sense: a flexible in vitro platform to determine cardiovascular risk (joint award with the BHF)