At the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre
we take the view that strong basic science underpins
clinical and translational research. To undertake good basic science we need to
identify the best and brightest graduate students. One of our flagship BRC
training schemes is a four-year MRes PhD programme.
Joining me today are two of our BRC graduate students Cinzia Imberti and Hoyin Lam.
Cinzia, this PhD MRes programme is a one plus three, so one year MRes and three
years in the laboratory doing a PhD tell me a little bit about the MRes in the
laboratory rotations that provides the core part of this programme.
I really enjoyed the MRes and especially the laboratory rotation that allowed us to
experience different lab their new techniques that would have been useful
later in our PhD and yes it was a great start of the PhD.
Now you get to choose the laboratory rotations and you're a chemist so that must have been an
interesting experience for you.
Yeah it was definitely an interesting experience. I chose my rotation based on
what interests me or what I could put passion in but also according to my background
I chose a more chemistry based project.
And so give me an example of some of the laboratory rotations you rotated
So my first rotation was in imaging
cancer with radionuclide in this rotation I learnt how to use radioactivity in a
good way to detect cancer at an early stage and that was very helpful for later.
Did you find the other two laboratory rotations helpful towards your PhD?
Definitely. I actually loved all of the three rotational. I just chose the
project that was more suited to me, to my capabilities, but all of them were very useful.
So tell us how your chemistry expertise has helped you with your
current research project.
My research project involved a different, a variety of skills.
In the first place I want to synthesise nova radiotracer and then to test them in vitro
on cells to see if they're useful and actually potentially going to clinics into patients.
And the long-term goal with this project in terms of the translation?
Hopefully it will be a clinical trial with a tracer able to detect a different kind of cancer.
Thank you. So Hoyin, there are other aspects of the MRes programme that we haven't talked
about including the generic skills modules. How did you find those?
We received a lot of training in a variety of generic skills such as statistics,
very important, flow cytometry a very new but powerful technique, but as well
imaging, we also have detection about proteins and actually a lot of different
techniques that were very useful to me to be applied in the projects that I was doing.
So tell us a little bit more in detail about these modules.
OK, so these modules contain lectures as well as sometimes hands-on experience, for
example I think the flow cytometry course was a great example of a combination of both.
We had good lectures about the theory as well how it could be applied to
different ways of, different experiments and then there was a particular day
where we had to do it ourselves basically at the, at the bench and then
we were guided through how to use the machines which steps were important
and that helped a lot for us to to use it in the lab afterwards on our own.
Obviously, they do provide us a lot of support afterwards.
So a busy year for you both. What would you say was the toughest thing about the MRes?
I think the toughest thing was
actually the rotations were relatively short because they were three months.
So if you think about it, about first month you try to get acclimatised to the lab.
to the people to the PI, which is the principal investigator, but as well to
the topic so you would like to read a good amount of background information in
order to do well and to actively think about the project.
What were the most helpful bits of the MRes towards your current PhD project?
The general skills were very helpful and made a lot of experiments possible, furthermore I think that the
rotations helped me a lot by choosing which lab I want to go to and with who I wanted to do my work with.
So finally tell me a little bit about your research project that's going on at the minute.
So I currently work on the most common form
of pancreatic cancer also known as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
We study the behaviour of these cancer cells and would like to see whether they can
change their behaviour upon signals from cells outside the tumor and hopefully
with that information we can find new therapies as well
possible drugable targets to cure pancreatic cancer.
Cinzia, Hoyin, very many thanks for coming and telling us about your PhD programme.
This MRes PhD studentship program is not just about basic laboratory research.
Students who enroll benefit from the annual summer PhD retreat, they learn about
written and presentation skills and the value of patient and public engagement
the idea is to set them up as principal investigators of the future.