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Imperial launches new industry funded PhD studentship programme

August 18, 2004

Imperial College London has entered into an arrangement with AstraZeneca and Unilever to provide funding for 10 PhD studentships in the new scientific field of metabonomics.

Unilever and AstraZeneca are the first members of a consortium of pharma and consumer goods companies that are supporting research training at Imperial in sciences allied to human healthcare. Several more companies are expected to join this group and further boost the training pool numbers in subsequent years.

The scheme, called 'The MetaGrad programme', will provide a novel method of training PhD students wishing to study the new sciences of metabonomics and metabolomics and the analytical technologies that support them. Metabonomics is a holistic approach for examining the dynamic metabolic changes in whole organisms. It can be used to provide information on drug toxicity and efficacy, clinical diagnostics and gene function. The technology was originally developed in order to test the toxic effects of drugs but has many clinical applications as well.

Imperial scientists have used it to predict the chances of someone developing coronary heart disease, using just a blood sample, rather than the more expensive and potentially risky option of angiography.

While the funding for the PhDs will come from industry, Imperial will retain all intellectual property rights from their work. The students will have the opportunity, but not be obligated, to join any of the funding companies on the completion of their studentships. They will be able to gain insight into real-world applications of the science through interactions with company scientists and visits to company laboratories as part of their PhD.

Professor Jeremy Nicholson, from Imperial College London and course leader, commented: "This new arrangement will allow Imperial to train more world class scientists, especially in the emerging field of metabonomics where there is a recognised shortage of PhD trained scientists. At the same time, it underlines the value that industry places on an Imperial education. For the successful students, this will be a great opportunity for them to enter a new and rapidly developing area of science, conducting blue skies research, in a highly interdisciplinary area and should lead to exciting career opportunities".

Dr Ian Wilson from Astra Zeneca, added: "We are very pleased to be helping to train the research leaders of the future, in an area where British science is currently leading the world, in the UK's foremost metabonomics laboratory."

Dr Frans van der Ouderaa, VP Corporate Research, said, "This is a great example of business and academia working together for mutual benefit and of ever-strengthening ties between the two. Imperial is pioneering new non-invasive techniques to probe human metabolism and although the likely applications for Unilever will be within the foods part of our business, there is also scope for the home and personal care business to benefit."

Imperial College, University of London

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