Wellcome Trust 4-Year PhD programme in mechanism-based drug discovery

Programme Director: Professor Paul Workman

Deputy Directors: Professor David Barford and Professor Keith Jones 

Aims

The aim of  the programme is to train students who can work at the cutting edge of one discipline as well as understand other biomedical areas well enough to work as part of the interdisciplinary team necessary to devise new therapies.

The programme will cover:

• target identification
• target validation, requiring skills in cell and molecular biology
• biological structure determination
• medicinal chemistry
• mechanisms of drug action
• development of biomarkers

Structure

The key features of the training will be:

• acquisition of background knowledge across the range of relevant disciplines
• the opportunity to pursue a single research problem requiring at least two different technical approaches over a four-year period
• an extended period in a lab in a second discipline at a time when it is most relevant to the project
• observation of the processes involved in managing a modern drug discovery project
• problem-based learning in multi-disciplinary teams – students will attend tutorials where the different backgrounds and perspectives of each student will be used to discuss case studies
• training in relevant legal/regulatory areas: GCP/Pharmacovigilance, patent protection, knowledge transfer, contract negotiations

Download the full programme structure.