AstraZeneca-University of Cambridge (2026) Project advertisements

The following projects have been selected for the AstraZeneca Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentships starting 2026. If you are a prospective student please look at the adverts provided below.

AstraZeneca-University of Cambridge (2026) Project Advertisements

1. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Deciphering cellular determinants of sensitivity to high-LET radiation to inform combination strategies with next-generation Targeted Alpha Therapies"

Project supervisors:  Professor Sir Steve Jackson (UCAM) and Dr Mark O'Connor (AZ)

Closing Date: 17th October 2025

Project details: Targeted Alpha Therapy (TAT) selectively delivers high Linear Energy Transfer (LET) alpha-particles to cancer cells, maximising efficacy while minimising toxicity. Knowledge about radiation sensitivity, accrued mainly with sparsely ionising low-LET radiation (e.g. X-ray, ¿-ray), demonstrated that genetic backgrounds influence radiation therapy (RT) responses, with DNA-damage response (DDR) pathways critically involved. However, determinants of sensitivity to high-LET radiation, such as alpha particles emitted by TAT, remain largely unexplored.

This project will explore the effects of radioligand therapies on cell viability and DDR activation in established human cell models. The student will perform CRISPR screens to determine factors that affect resistance/sensitivity and follow these up with mechanistic studies of a shortlist of identified targets. These studies may uncover mechanisms of cellular responses, potential biomarkers and additional therapeutic vulnerabilities that underlie the responses of normal and tumour cells to alpha radiotherapy.

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2. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Targeting Cardiometabolic Dysfunction in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF): Mechanisms of Exercise-Induced Protection"

Project supervisors:  Dr Ana Vujic (UCAM) and Dr Karin Jennbacken (AZ)

Closing Date: 2nd October 2025

Project details: Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a common, under-recognised condition strongly linked to obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and hypertension. Exercise is one of the few interventions consistently shown to improve outcomes, yet its protective mechanisms remain poorly understood.

This project will combine molecular, cellular, and physiological approaches to explore how exercise reprograms metabolic and inflammatory pathways that connect cardiac function to systemic health. Insights gained will inform the development of novel therapeutic strategies for HFpEF and broader cardiometabolic disease.

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3. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Defining and targeting immune-regulatory metabolic niches during benign-to-malignant transformation of pancreatic cancer"

Project supervisors:  Dr Tim Halim (UCAM) and Dr Gregory Hamm (AZ)

Closing Date: 17th October 2025

Project details: The tumour immunity cycle involves cyclical trafficking of T cell subsets between the tumour and lymphoid organs. While current immunotherapy has focused on re-energizing exhausted T cells, it is becoming apparent that many checkpoint drugs act on specific subsets of 'stem like' T cells, which are present in the lymph nodes, or other sites such as the tumour itself.

The proposed project will extend on this collaboration, utilizing cutting-edge mouse models and immunology expertise (CRUK-CI), access to relevant patient material (matched fresh-frozen PDAC and serum samples). We will utilize AstraZeneca expertise in spatial and circulatory metabolomics, as well as imaging mass cytometry, and test the effect of AZ clinical compounds on the immune-metabolic landscape of our PanIN-to-PDAC models. Dr Koulman will provide training and support with metabolomic and lipidomic analysis.

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4. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Matchmaker: Prioritising the best cell line for expressing target proteins using CRISPR and machine learning."

Project supervisors:  Dr Susanne Bornelöv (UCAM) and Dr Lukas Westlake (AZ)

Closing Date: 31st October 2025

Project details: Protein expression and purification remain fundamental bottlenecks in biomedical research and drug discovery. Current approaches are time-consuming and often fail to express target proteins at sufficient levels. In this project, you will investigate whether mammalian cell lines can be genetically altered to enhance expression of challenging proteins. Moreover, you will determine whether the success of such alternations depends on protein family and on mRNA characteristics such as codon optimality.

The student will construct a panel of engineered cell lines and collect high-throughout measurements of corresponding mRNA and protein levels for several protein targets. Ultimately, you will use these data to develop Matchmaker, a machine learning framework for matching novel protein targets with their optimal expression conditions. Altogether, this project will provide new insights into the mechanisms limiting expression of challenging proteins and how to overcome these barriers.

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5. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Experimental and computational framework for optimising dosing strategies to mitigate T-cell exhaustion in T-cell engager therapies."

Project supervisors: Prof Graham Ladds (UCAM) and Dr Alberto Ippolito (AZ)

Closing Date: 14th November 2025

Project details:  T-cell engager (TCE) therapies are increasingly prevalent in the clinical pipeline of pharmaceutical companies. While TCEs are promising therapeutic agents due to their high potency, a major pitfall is T-cell exhaustion, which reduces therapeutic effect of TCEs so preventing rapid regression of the tumor lesion. In this project you will evaluate the concept of "dosing holidays" and how they may mitigate T-cell exhaustion.You will combine interdisciplinary approaches of extensive in-vitro experiments that quantify effector cell kinetics with translational pharmacokinetic pharmacodynamic modelling to inform, evaluate and design potential schedules to mitigate T-cell exhaustion.

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6. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Delivering biological proximity-inducing degraders - a comparative analysis of viral, RNA and protein therapeutics."

Project supervisors: Dr Cathy Wilson and Prof Laura Itzhaki (UCAM) and Dr James Hunt (AZ)

Closing Date: 31st October 2025

Project details: Conventional approaches to cancer drug discovery have proven incapable of tackling many key targets, hence new strategies are urgently required. Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) is one such strategy, growing at a remarkable rate but severely constrained by the limited availability of small-molecule ligands. Biologic-based PROTACs (bioPROTACs) are especially valuable because peptide- and protein-based ligands are available for many targets that are currently intractable to a small molecule approach and can be readily engineered to create novel degraders. Our research has established key principles to drive the discovery of bioPROTACs against such targets. It is now crucial to harness the capabilities of our novel bioPROTACs as a therapeutic approach, and the development of novel delivery methods is the goal of this PhD project.

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7. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Robust hypothalamic cellular models of neurometabolic disease"

Project supervisors: Dr. Florian Merkle (UCAM) and Dr. Bilada Bilican and Dr. Alice Adriaenssens (AZ)

Closing Date: 31st October 2025

Project details: Obesity is a major global health issue with a strong genetic component that largely acts via neurons that regulate appetite, including POMC and AGRP neurons of the hypothalamus. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be differentiated into hypothalamic neurons that closely resemble their counterparts in the brain. In this project, you will work to generate hypothalamic neurons more quickly, efficiently, and reproducibly by introducing candidate transcription factors (TFs) involved in cell type specification and maturation. This project will produce insights into the biology of human neuron specification, develop deeply characterized cellular models to facilitate discovery science, and benefit from AstraZeneca-supported facilities such as the FGSL to reveal new therapeutic targets.

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8. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Application of Electron Crystallography in the Study of Solid-State Transitions of Chiral Drugs"

Project supervisors: Prof Paul Midgley (UCAM) and Dr Okky Putra (AZ)

Closing Date: 21st November 2025

Project details: Understanding crystal structure is crucial not only during the discovery phase, where structural elucidation is routine, but also throughout the development phase, which involves transforming a molecule into a medicine and addressing various chemistry, manufacturing, and control (CMC) challenges. A key aspect of this process is characterizing the solid-state landscape of drug candidates, which can involve complex solid-phase transitions such as the dehydration of hydrates, desolvation of solvates, and solid-solid phase transformations. Selecting the appropriate solid form is essential to ensure consistent and reliable clinical profiles, and it is also important from a regulatory perspective. These challenges are heightened when dealing with chiral drug candidates, which are common among potential therapeutics. Chirality introduces an additional layer of complexity, as it requires precise determination of stereochemistry alongside resolving intricate solid-state behaviours.

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9. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Improving the Stability of ADCs and their Formulations by Mitigating Degradation Pathways"

Project supervisors: Prof David Spring (UCAM) and Dr Nicholas Darton (AZ)

Closing Date: 2nd December 2025

Project details: Applications are invited for a 4-year PhD studentship based in the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge and the new AstraZeneca Discovery Centre at Cambridge. The student will be working on a collaborative project jointly supervised by Prof David Spring (Cambridge) and Dr Nicholas Darton (AstraZeneca) and will work have opportunity to work across the two sites. The project, entitled "Improving the Stability of ADCs and their Formulations by Mitigating Degradation Pathways" is in the field of Synthetic Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology. 

The project will involve Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). ADCs have revolutionized targeted cancer therapy by delivering cytotoxic drugs to cancer cells with reduced systemic toxicity. However, their long-term stability is often compromised by aggregation and photooxidative degradation. The project will involve introducing both photostabilising and hydrophilic functionalities into ADCs. This strategy offers a novel route to enhance formulation stability and could provide general insights for improving the stability of a wide range of ADCs. The project will involve both organic synthesis and chemical biology skills. 

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10. Project Title: AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship "Developing New Methods for Enantioselective Synthesis of Heterocyclic Atropiosmeric Compounds of Medicinal Relevance"

Project supervisors: Prof Robert J. Phipps (UCAM) and Dr Anthony Metrano (AZ)

Closing Date: 20th November 2025

Project details: In the past few years our group has developed, often in collaboration with AstraZeneca, new chiral phosphine ligands based on ubiquitous Buchwald ligands such as SPhos and RuPhos. These achiral ligands are made chiral by sulfonation then resolved, with the sulfonate group acting as interaction point for engaging in attractive non-covalent interactions with the substrate, allowing excellent enantioselectivities to be obtained for compatible substrate types. We have exciting results that suggest our ligands can be effective on heterocyclic partners and will explore this in collaboration with AstraZeneca to target heterocyclic biaryl motifs of direct relevance to AstraZeneca and more broadly in a multitude of medicinal chemistry targets.

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