Industry funded PhD

Hi, my name is William Lamb, I'm a research scientist with Santen pharmaceutical currently based at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. Recently completed my PhD in retinal stem cell biology, also here at the Institute and supported by Santen. Before that I studied a master's in human genetic disease at UCL and I worked on projects involved in identifying loss of function, genetic variants, patients with rare inherited diseases.

So my PhD project was based upon identifying neuroprotective signals produced by Müller glial stem cells. I was based out of Professor Astrid Limb's lab where at a UCL and her group had discovered that these Müller glial stem cells were capable of promoting survival of neurons and protection of visual function in models of experimental glaucoma. Although the source of an effect had not been clarified, which was where my project came in, and I was looking at actually these extracellular vesicles, tiny membrane bound sacks essentially, which were produced by these cells and then released into the external environment, and our hypothesis, I suppose, and what we're working on now, is these vesicles could play a role in a novel therapeutic tool for retinal neurodegenerative conditions like glaucoma.

So I think my interest in research has always been focused particularly on projects that have this direct translational application to the clinic. My motivation, I think, as a researcher comes from the idea that something I do might contribute in some way to the development of a new treatment or medicine or diagnostic testing. With that in mind, I guess being fortunate to be sponsored by Santen and during my PhD work felt like a really great opportunity to get first-hand experience of a pharmaceutical industry. I'd like to think that I do have a, perhaps a better understanding of some of the more commercial pragmatic aspects of our research regard to sort of growing and developing a project with a specifically clinical focus.

So the pandemic is obviously an extremely challenging time across all of  academia and science as a whole. So we obviously we had our COVID enforced lockdown, and we're still dealing with issues around you know, the supply interruption to supply chains, huge delays, getting certain reagents and chemicals, etc. But I was quite fortunate actually, in that as I was approaching the end of my doctorate when lockdown started, I was able to spend a long time sort of home writing and finishing that without too much interruption, although obviously it was very surreal experience.

So in five years time, well, as I mentioned, I'm currently working for centre in the brand new UK Research Hub, which is a collaboration with UCL and Moorfields. And within that project, we have short and long term goals. It really adds to the ideas that I was investigating for my PhD. So in five years time, I'd like to think that would have brought some of those through to fruition and that the hub itself will be thriving and expanding, and really a really fruitful collaboration. I think I currently obviously still have that foot in academia, being phased out of UCL, and my ambition for this time is probably to move more completely into industry. I think obviously, the biotechnology based therapeutics field things like cell and gene therapies are attracting huge interest at the moment. It's very, very exciting. I would like to think that in five years time, be able to be playing a small part in the realisation of some of these new treatment strategies.