Supervisors and Projects

Prediction of Interstitial Lung Disease in people living with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Supervisors

Aurelie Najm, School of Infection and Immunity, University of Glasgow 

Robert Gray, School of Infection and Immunity, University of Glasgow

Carl Goodyear, School of Infection and Immunity, University of Glasgow

Industry Partner - Astra Zeneca 

 

Summary

Interstitial lung diseases (ILD) represent a group of heterogeneous pulmonary fibrotic diseases often associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA-ILD represent a heterogeneous complication and presents with different clinical, histological and radiological patterns, called nonspecific interstitial pneumonia (NSIP) and usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP). Due to the lack of reliable diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers, and poor prognosis, this represents a substantial clinical challenge.

Our project aims at: (i) identifying monocytes epigenetic signatures and their impact on gene and inflammatory pathways expression according to the pattern of lung disease (UIP & NSIP) in RA-ILD and ILD without joint condition; (ii) understanding these signatures' contribution to myeloid cells function and phenotypes across both circulating and joint and lung tissue compartments; and (iii) confirming identified epigenetic profiles as biomarkers for patient stratification.

During this iCASE doctoral program in collaboration  Industry Partner – Astra Zeneca, the candidate will be given the opportunity to work with an non-academic partner during a 3 months placement. With a strong focus on precision medicine, the candidate will be trained in a wide range of techniques, starting with epigenetic profiling of the myeloid compartment in blood with Cut & Tag and ATAC-seq (i); and continuing with more in depth single cell techniques with multiome (single cell RNA seq and ATAC seq) analysis for myeloid compartment clustering and trajectory analysis in bloods and target tissues (ii). The third part of the program will translate these findings into patients stratification tools, using artificial intelligence-derived algorithms (iii)