Collaborative and Industrial PhDs

10% increase in PhD studentships since 2019.

3 in 4 PhD studentships are for 4 years.

45 UK institutes host industrial PhD studentships alongside many worldwide collaborative opportunities.

Hi, my name is Karina and I am currently a final year PhD student on the GSK University of Strathclyde collaborative PhD programme. Prior to this, I did my MSci at the University of Bath studying Natural Sciences and I majored in chemistry and minored in pharmacology.

My PhD project is a collaboration between the medicinal chemistry department and the biopharmaceuticals department. And the overall aim of my PhD is to combine small molecule drugs with a large antibody biologics to generate novel antibody drug conjugates.

As part of my MSc, I completed a one year synthetic chemistry placement at GSK Stevenage doing medicinal chemistry and I knew that I love this so much that I wanted to return to carry on my PhD here with GSK.

Working from home during COVID gave me a lot of time to reflect on my project, browse through the literature, write literature reviews, and so this was quite productive in that respect. I was also given a lot of time to think about my project and therefore design key experiments so that when I returned to the lab, I could turn out results as quickly as possible.

In five years time, I can definitely still see myself in the pharmaceutical industry carrying out drug discovery, as I find this to be extremely fulfilling. Whether this is going to be in small molecule research or antibody biologics or combination of both. I can not see it .So I guess that's something that I'll just have to figure out.

Hi, my name is Kate and I'm in my third year on the collaborative PhD scheme between GSK and the University of Strathclyde. I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Durham, which was an integrated Master's course with a year in industry. And I was really fortunate to spend this year synthesising pharmaceutical compounds here at GSK. I enjoyed it so much that I stayed on and was fortunate to get a place on the PhD scheme. The scheme is a collaborative scheme between academia and industry, where we're predominantly based in industry at GSK and Stevenage, with support from Strathclyde up in Glasgow.

I work in the field of chemical biology and the interface between chemistry and biology, working to accelerate drug discovery. Specifically, I'm developing reactive functionalities, which are valuable tools to identify targets for compounds and to generally investigate protein targets that have disease relevance.

Having spent a year at GSK on placement, I was very keen to continue my PhD here. So I saw firsthand the great benefits of being based in industry that equips you with professional experience alongside the development as a researcher through the PhD qualification, having access to such a variety of resources and learning from people who are experts in their field is absolutely invaluable. It means that we're able to achieve a large amount of work very quickly and also conduct work that is highly impactful and applied directly to GSK projects. Beyond GSK it's brilliant to be able to tap into expertise and academia through supervision from Strathclyde, and more generally, with the many academic collaborations that we've grown within the chemical biology group at GSK.

The pandemic meant that we're not able to access the lab for a few months, which has a lab beef PhD student was daunting. However, I was grateful to have the time to learn new skills that I otherwise would not have had the chance to prioritise. I very much enjoyed devoting the time to learn to code in our and now I always use this to communicate my research results effectively, both internally at GSK and presenting at many external conferences. The pandemic also allowed me to spend time developing my writing skills and conduct many projects have introduced new exciting angles to my PhD research.

In five years time, I hope to be working in the healthcare industry as I find the field a great match to my strengths and thoroughly enjoy knowing that my work is contributed to people's well being

Before I started my PhD on the GSK Strathclyde collaborative PhD programme, I did an integrated MChem degree at Oxford University. My master's project was in spin chemistry so quite different from where I ended up with my PhD work. And I then moved on to the PhD programme and the rest is history.

My PhD project sat sort of between Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology and was based at the GSK Stevenage site. I was working on bifunctional small molecules, including antibody recruiting molecules for targeted cell killing and lysosomal targeting chimeras or targeted protein degradation. My project began with a lot of synthesis. But I did do an increasing amount of biological assay work as I made my way through the project and I picked up new skills. And by the end of the PhD, I was running cell based assays and I was fortunate enough to learn some of the skills for that during a secondment to the GSK Upper Providence site in the US.

As I mentioned, the PhD was quite a big change from my master's project. And it was certainly a steep learning curve and the challenge when I started. And the reason for the change from my from my masters to the PhD and moving into the pharmaceutical industry was it was only very late on in, in my degree that we had any exposure really to medicinal chemistry and I remember the lecturer explaining the kind of design and mechanism of cisplatin. And it just got me really interested in the idea of rational drug design. And so when I saw the opportunity to learn more within the pharmaceutical industry that was really appealing to me.

I also knew that I did not want to stay in academia long term. So it was I thought it was a great chance to get some relevant experience in industry and of a work environment more generally, at the same time as taking on an academic project as a PhD. But at the time, I was not really looking for PhDs in academia and if I had not ended up on this particular programme, I think I would have probably worked in research and development and then thought about further study later on in my career.

So during COVID, the PhD students based at Stevenage and my cohort, they spent quite a lot of time out of the lab or on a rota with more limited lab time to make space for essential project work within the kind of socially distant system that was implemented. I was fortunate in that I had run some DNA coded library selection shortly before the pandemic began. And so I was able to spend quite a lot of time running data analysis at home. But one of the kind of unfortunate impacts was that I was not able to get up to Glasgow for us a common at the University of Strathclyde, which normally PhDs on the programme will do for three months or so. And I would have really liked to get some experience of a different type of chemistry and to get to know my academic supervisors group, and really spend some time in Glasgow it would have been great. So that was a bit of a bit of a shame. And the other thing that I think we all missed out on was, was in person conferences. I was lucky to be able to attend quite a few virtual events, which I really enjoyed. And I like presenting and communicating, communicating my science to other people, but it would have been really nice to present more in person and kind of connected people in a more meaningful way.

So I always find the question of where I would like to be, later on in my career, quite a tricky one. I never I never feel like I'm planning things out very far in advance. But I would like to stay in drug discovery in the future. And it may sound very cliché, but I would like to feel that I'm making a contribution to getting drugs to the market which will really make a difference to patients. When I finished the PhD recently I was not very sure which direction I want to go wanted to go in, in terms of the types of role to look for. I have just taken a job in clinical development on that site, which will be a big change and again, a lot to learn after the PhD. But I'm really looking forward to starting and seeing what I make of that new side of drug discovery.

Hi, I'm Amy Mickleburgh and I'm a second year PhD student at the University of Bristol. I'm partnered with UCB who are over in Slough. So I'm originally from Manchester, but it came down to Bristol to do my undergraduate chemistry degree and my master's and I stayed in Bristol for my PhD, which while is still chemistry is definitely more of a biochemistry based project.

So my project uses a technique known as nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR to study a protein called Alpha synuclein. So alpha synuclein is really heavily implicated in Parkinson's disease. But exactly how it causes Parkinson's disease is so poorly understood. So it's known that alpha synuclein aggregates to form Lewy bodies in the brain. But exactly how this process works is still quite poorly understood. So I'm, that's where my project comes in. Really. I'm using NMR to look at this early process and try and identify some drug targets because we still do not have a cure for Parkinson's disease.

So after I graduated, I knew I wanted to do research. And I knew I wanted it to be disease research, but I was not sure whether I should stay in academia or whether I should go over to industry. So finding this project that sort of the best of both worlds I felt was a really good fit for me. I felt that I would get an opportunity to meet a wider range of people and to develop a wider range of skills than I would if I was just at one institution. And I've definitely found that it really pushed me into develop my communication skills and also the way I present my work.

So I started my PhD in October 2020. So just after the height of the pandemic, and I was actually really lucky to be able to get lab time initially. So I was meant to start my project at UCB, which can happen because of travel restrictions. So I had to make use of video calls and emails to contact my supervisory team at UCB. And I actually found that the move to virtual communication has really benefited me, something I still use. It just means that I'm able to ask questions to the people who are experts in their field immediately, and that I'm able to have meetings with my supervisory teams at both institutions much more readily. And it means I do not have to travel so much. So even though COVID Probably slowed me down initially. I think overall, it's actually been quite beneficial for my project.

So in five years time, hopefully I'll have finished my PhD, and I hope to be working in industry. I personally, I would really like to be working on muscular dystrophy. But yeah, I see myself in industry in a team of like minded scientists, working on some of our toughest diseases.

My name is Lawrence Quenault I completed a Master's in biochemistry from the University of Warwick, during which I spent the last year at UCB, conducting a project that will become the subject of my master's thesis.

I started my PhD in February of 2022. During my PhD I'll hopefully be discovering some antibodies against a protein called DUX4 which causes the disease Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy and is also known as FSHD. And then we should be reformatting these antibodies so that they can convey biological action against DUX4 and for the antibody discovery phase. I shall be at UCB and then for the testing of the antibodies against DUX4. I shall be at King's College London in my supervisor Pete Zammit's lab.

During the completion of my Master's thesis I got a small experience of what to expect from working with both academia and industry. From industry you get lots of people who are experts in the nitty-gritty of their subject, whereas in academia you get access to people who are not necessarily experts in your area, but they are experts in their own and they also give you a different way of thinking, a different way of solving problems, which can always be useful for a PhD student.

And then doing a collaboration between industry and academia. You get access to both of those ways of thinking, which can only be a good thing for a PhD student.

At the moment, the pandemic has not directly influenced my PhD experience. However, it has led to sometimes being some products being shipped to me to be delayed which has led to me to come up with some novel ways of approaching certain experiments.

In five years time, hopefully I'll have a full time job using the abilities and knowledge I gained from my PhD, which would make a nice change from just being a student all the time. And yeah, that is what I'd want - to work in research.