Krishnan-Ang PhD Scholarship in Cancer Research

at  University of Cambridge

A fully funded PhD scholarship is available in Adam Wilkinson’s lab at the University of Cambridge Department of Haematology and Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (CSCI) to begin in October 2025.
Dr Wilkinson has won significant long term funding from the Wellcome Trust and Krishnan-Ang Foundation and is relocating his lab to CSCI from Oxford (https://www.rdm.ox.ac.uk/about/our-divisions/nuffield-division-of-clinical-laboratory-sciences/nuffield-division-of-clinical-laboratory-sciences-research/wilkinson-group). Dr Wilkinson’s research focusses on expanding and manipulating haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) ex vivo. He has pioneered highly influential new methods to expand transplantable HSCs long-term ex vivo (Wilkinson et al, Nature, 2019; Igarashi et al, Blood Advances, 2023; Sakurai et al, Nature, 2023; Bozhilov et al, bioRxiv, 2024) which are now in use worldwide. These methods enable efficient CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and genetic screens in functional HSCs (Wilkinson et al, Nature Communications, 2021; Becker et al, Cell Stem Cell, 2023; Haney et al, bioRxiv, 2022), which have exciting applications in cell/gene therapy and disease modelling.
Dr Wilkinson’s funding allows him to offer an exciting project focussing on blood cancer initiation. The project will combine HSC expansion and gene editing technologies with functional and molecular assays to model and understand the consequences of blood cancer-associated genetic mutations on HSCs and leukaemogenesis. This disease model will be further used to screen for molecular vulnerabilities, with the aim of identifying novel therapeutic strategies to treat and prevent blood cancer.

Please refer the Job description for details