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.
| UCAM-Supervisor |
UCAM Department |
AZ-Supervisor | Project Title |
|
Dr Ana Vujic |
Medicine | Karin Jennbacken | Targeting Cardiometabolic Dysfunction in Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF): Mechanisms of Exercise-Induced Protection |
| Dr Catherine Wilson | Pharmacology | James Hunt | Delivering a biological proximity-inducing degrader of c-Myc – a comparative analysis of viral, RNA and protein therapeutics. |
| Prof. David Spring | Chemistry | Nick Darton | Improving the Stability of ADCs and their Formulations by Mitigating Degradation Pathways |
| Dr Florian Merkle | Pharmacology | Bilada Bilican | Robust hypothalamic cellular models of neurometabolic disease |
| Prof. Graham Ladds | Pharmacology | Alberto Ippolito | Experimental and computational framework for the analysis and design of dosing schedules to mitigate T-cell exhaustion during T-cell engager therapies |
| Prof. Ljiljana Fruk | Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology | Jessica Qing Yu | Exploiting Multivalency to Design Telodendrimer Micelles for Tissue-specific Accumulation |
| Prof. Paul Midgley | Materials Science and Metallurgy | Okky Putra | Application of Electron Crystallography in the Study of Solid-State Transitions of Chiral Drugs |
| Prof. Robert Phipps | Chemistry | Anthony Metrano | Developing New Methods for Enantioselective Synthesis of Heterocyclic Atropiosmeric Compounds of Medicinal Relevance |
| Prof. S. Jackson | CRUK Cambridge Institute | Mark O'Connor | Deciphering cellular determinants of sensitivity to high-LET radiation to inform combination strategies with next-generation Targeted Alpha Therapies. |
| Dr Susanne Bornelov | Biochemistry | Lukas Westlake | Matchmaker: Prioritising the best cell line for expressing target proteins using CRISPR and machine learning |
| Dr Tim Halim | CRUK Cambridge Institute | Gregory Hamm | Defining and targeting immune-regulatory metabolic niches during benign-to-malignant transformation of pancreatic cancer. |
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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