The University of Glasgow has been doubly successful in the prestigious Medical Research Council (MRC) 2021 Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) competition, working in partnership with institutions across the UK and beyond to deliver two outstanding PhD programmes.

The Precision Medicine PhD programme and the Trials Methodology Research Partnership DTP will both receive funding from the MRC.

University of Glasgow Main Building from Kelvinbridge

The MRC has confirmed its continued support for the Precision Medicine PhD programme with a further 5 years of funding. This PhD programme is a large, flagship doctoral training programme run in partnership across the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, alongside the Karolinska Institute, and welcomed its first cadre of students in 2016. The newly secured funding will fund doctoral students from 2022 onwards.

The programme is devoted to providing state-of-the-art, flexible training in informatics, data analytics, genetics, genomics, epidemiology, clinical populations, clinical tissue and molecular pathology, drawing applicants from either engineering/physical science or biomedical backgrounds.  The MRC has confirmed its continued support for this programme with a further 5 years of funding, aiming to train scientists with cross-disciplinary skills necessary to realise the potential of Precision Medicine, which integrates and analyses an individual’s data to stratify risk, elucidate molecular mechanism and resilience, and inform personalised disease prevention and treatment.  

The Trials Methodology Research Partnership DTP brings together 12 partners - the University of Liverpool, the Institute of Cancer Research, Newcastle University, Queen Mary University London, University College London, the Universities of Aberdeen, Bangor, Birmingham, Cambridge, Glasgow, Leeds and Plymouth - to provide doctoral training to a total of 30 students across the UK for the next three years.

The Partnership DTP is one of 17 projects funded by the MRC as part of a £79million investment to support high-quality doctoral training programmes that take a student-centred approach, focusing on scientific excellence, positive research culture and wider training opportunities.

Led by the University of Liverpool, the Trials Methodology Research Partnership DTP will develop and train a cohort of researchers with methodological skills and insight beyond clinical trials, filling a strategic skills priority gap.

It will provide a new generation of trials methodologists with the skills and experience to address the new challenges brought by high-dimensional data, such as genomic information, and harness opportunities offered through digital technologies and informatics to improve trial design, conduct and analysis for the benefit of patients.

Glasgow DTP lead Prof Rod Taylor, from the University’s MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit & Robertson Centre for Biostatistics at the Institute of Health and Well Being, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored not only the importance of clinical trials but also the need for innovative trial design, such as platform trials where we can efficiently assess multiple treatments or diseases within the same protocol.

"Glasgow has a strong tradition in trial design and delivery across a number of disease areas and population health; being part of this DTP gives us a unique opportunity to develop a cadre of doctoral researchers appropriately equipped to the challenges of clinical trials going forward.”

The Trials Methodology Research Partnership builds on the success of the MRC Network of Hubs for Trials Methodology Research which was created to improve health by improving trials.

Professor Fiona Watt, Executive Chair, MRC, said: “We are thrilled to announce our funding for the next generation of MRC PhD researchers through 17 new UK-wide Doctoral Training Partnership awards. Outstanding research is only possible when we invest in people to conduct that research.

"Our new awards are student-centred, setting out to increase the diversity of individuals pursing research careers and providing opportunities for students to widen their horizons during and post-PhD.”

Investments in doctoral training are a key component of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the MRC’s overarching vision to develop research talent and skills.

 

Enquiries: ali.howard@glasgow.ac.uk or elizabeth.mcmeekin@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 6557 or 0141 330 4831

 

 

First published: 8 July 2021

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