ix new Oxford-Celgene Fellowships will support postdoctoral researchers and clinicians across six departments within the Medical Sciences Division, providing an opportunity for them to gain exposure to the field of commercial drug discovery and development. The new Fellowships represent an additional investment of £3M into the University.
The Oxford-Celgene Fellowship Programme was established in 2015 with the aim of stimulating new scientific discovery and translation and to facilitate skills and people transfer between researchers in academia and industry. Oxford’s relationship with Celgene continues to grow year on year, with the new 2019 Fellowships taking the total of Oxford-Celgene Fellows to 22.
As with all Oxford-Celgene Fellows, the new Fellows will carry out world-leading research during their three-year postdoctoral research project and have a unique level of support available to them through the collaborations. Fellows also benefit from the direction and mentorship of Celgene project leads and have opportunities to carry out research and use facilities at Celgene labs in the US and Spain, in addition to accessing unique training opportunities.
The six new Fellowships for 2019 are:
| Fellow | Department & PI | Project |
| Shivan Sivakumar | Department of Oncology, PI – Mark Middleton
The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, NDORMS, PI – Mike Dustin |
Single-cell characterisation of tumour-infiltrating immune cells in pancreatic cancer to uncover therapeutic vulnerabilities |
| Nan Yang | The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, NDORMS
PI’s – Jagdeep Nanchahal, Thomas Layton & David Adams (Birmingham) |
Identification of novel therapeutic targets and disease biomarkers in human liver fibrosis by dissecting cellular heterogeneity |
| Ruxandra Dafinca | Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
PI – Kevin Talbot |
Targeting intracellular trafficking and nucleocytoplasmic transport in mouse and human motor neurons carrying ALS mutations in TDP-43 |
| Kate Lines | Radcliffe Department of Medicine
PI – Rajesh Thakker |
Targeting Epigenetic Mechanisms for the Treatment of Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumours |
| TBC | Nuffield Department of Medicine
PI’s – Holm Uhlig, Paul Klenerman & Arian Laurence |
Therapeutic potential of IL-18 targeting therapies in IBD – from computational biology and functional understanding towards a clinical trial |
| Supat Thongjuea | MRC WIMM Centre for Computational Biology and MRC Molecular Haematology Unit, MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Radcliffe Department of Medicine
PI’s – Paresh Vyas, Adam Mead & Claus Nerlov |
Single-Cell Computational Biology for Translational Medicine |