https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/our-research/our-research-infrastructure/nihr-great-ormond-street-hospital-brc/support-researchers/brc-opportunities/surgeon-scientist-pre-doctoral-call/

NIHR GOSH BRC and Alder Hey Surgeon Scientist Pre-doctoral Programme

Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

CLOSED: This call invited surgeon trainees to undertake a year-long research placement in translational biomedical research at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in collaboration with Great Ormond Street Hospital and UCL GOS Institute of Child Health.

This round, one position is available and applications were invited from Paediatric Neurosurgeons and Paediatric Urologists (ST1-2) aligned to the remit of this year's project portfolio.

Submit your application here

Aim

The National Institute for Health and Social Care Research (NIHR) GOSH Biomedical Research Centre (GOSH BRC) are pleased to announce a new round of the Surgeon Scientist pre-doctoral programme to support the next generation of surgeon scientist within the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine field. One full time fellowship is available to fund an excellent surgical trainee (ST1-ST2) in Paediatric Neurosurgery or Urology to undertake a one-year research project. This scheme is a collaboration between the GOSH BRC and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

Background

The NIHR GOSH BRC is a collaboration between Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH). It funds early translational research focused on paediatric rare or complex diseases, which aims to translate discoveries from basic/discovery science into clinical research and through to patient and economic benefit. We were first awarded BRC status from the NIHR in 2007 and, in 2022, we secured £38 million for our fourth term until 2028. Essential to delivering the BRC’s strategy is also our newly created Paediatric Excellence Initiative, a partnership between the BRC, Alder Hey, Birmingham and Sheffield Children’s Hospitals. The initiative will enable more rapid translation of our research, help to create a network of excellence and reflects our ambition to ensure staff from a range of career stages, professions and backgrounds can influence our strategy.

In its fourth term of funding, the NIHR GOSH BRC has five strategic research themes. Alongside our themes, our Central Development Hub supports our career development academy, business development and patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) activities.

The NIHR GOSH BRC’s Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (TERM) theme aims to pioneer the repair and reconstruction of tissues and organs to treat children with structural malformations, tissue and organ failure, and to improve their life expectancy and quality of life. The theme combines expertise in stem cell biology, iPSC platforms, bioengineering, and surgery to pioneer laboratory-grown organs and develop strategies for tissue and organ restoration. Our key aim is to create a pipeline of research training opportunities to develop future surgeon scientist leaders. We recently joined GOSH Charity to co-fund the Lewis Spitz Surgeon Scientist PhD Fellowship which supports surgical trainees to obtain a PhD at the Institute of Child Health under the supervision of ICH academics and GOSH surgeons.

Together with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and GOSH, the TERM theme would like to establish a surgeon scientist training programme at pre-doctoral level to provide opportunities for research training, protected research time to develop a competitive application for a doctoral fellowship, and to ultimately develop future surgeon scientist leaders. The aim is to increase capacity through training in the scientific basis of paediatric surgery, with a focus on treating children who suffer from congenital malformations and other conditions requiring surgery.

Timelines

Timelines are subject to change.

Application open: 02 October 2024

Application closes: 12 November 2024, 23.59

Shortlisting and interviews: December-January 2025

Earliest start date: 01 April 2025

Funding call information

This funding provides full salary support for research commensurate with your stage of clinical training (ST1-ST2) for a period of one year. Start date of the fellowship will be subject to the approval of the deanery, but the earliest start date is 1st April 2025. The successful applicant will be employed at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and based primarily at Alder Hey Children's Hospital and the University of Liverpool, with some time being spent at GOSH and ICH.

We have funding for one fellowship this round for surgical specialities in Paediatric Neurosurgery or Paediatric Urology. Applicants are required to apply to undertake a specific project, with candidates selecting a project listed on the portfolio. The table below provides a summary of the projects available. Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact supervisors for any projects they are interested in to discuss the project and supervisory arrangements in further detail.

Eligibility criteria and conditions

We are looking for exceptional and motivated surgical trainees in Neurosurgery and Urology passionate about research for the benefit of patients.

You will hold a registered primary qualification in Medicine (MB BS or equivalent), have a full GMC registration and entry on the appropriate GMC Specialist Register. You will be a surgical trainee at ST1-ST2 level.

You should have clear plans for completion of specialty training. Applicants should consult their deanery about undertaking an OOPR and their plans to complete specialty training within the appropriate timelines.

You will demonstrate an ambition to pursue a clinical academic career path and be able to provide evidence of previous research experience and/or aptitude to undertake a research-intensive PhD in the future. Candidates do not need to have held a previous position with formal research time (e.g. an academic foundation or academic clinical fellowship (ACF) post).

These are full time research positions with strictly limited opportunity to participate in clinical activities. Where the clinical work relates specifically to recruitment of participants to a clinical study that forms part of the work of the fellowship, this activity will be funded through the fellowship. Where the clinical activity does not directly form part of the research activity (e.g. where it is standard clinical duties), this will need to be funded through alternative non-research funding routes as the scheme is intended to provide protected time for research activities only.

Where appropriate opportunities are available, fellows may be allowed to take on additional clinical shifts, paid for by the respective clinical specialties. Permission to do this will need to be obtained from both their primary supervisors and the BRC. This will be granted as long as the fellow can demonstrate that this work will not interfere with completion of their research training.

Projects portfolio

Supervisory team:

Conor Mallucci; Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon; Alder Hey Hospital.

Kristian Aquilina, Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon, GOSH

Aswin Chari, Academic Clinical Lecturer in Neurosurgery, UCL GOS ICH

Project description

“Lesion-symptom mapping from MRI for outcome prediction in neonatal IVH”

Germinal matrix haemorrhage (GMH) and intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH) is a leading cause of neurological disability in preterm neonates and can result in cognitive dysfunction, physical disability in the form of cerebral palsy, as well as seizures, visual and hearing problems. Predicting the severity of this neurological disability has been difficult from early clinical data and it is not known whether specific treatments alter the trajectory of these disabilities. Recently, it has become routine clinical practice to obtain an MRI at/around term equivalent age in order to guide clinical decision making. This provides an opportunity to assess whether term MRI features predict developmental outcomes; our work suggests that deep grey matter volume on MRI is predictive of neurodevelopmental outcomes at 2 years of age. In this project, we aim to further this work by performing lesion-symptom mapping, a relatively novel technique aimed at assessing whether specific brain regions are associated with specific symptoms, in order to assess whether specific features of grey and white matter damage on these scans may be associated with the physical, cognitive and sensory disabilities associated with IVH. We have already assembled a cohort of 35 patients at GOSH who have had MRI scans at term-equivalent age and anticipate a similar sized cohort at Alder Hey. We will retrospectively analyse these scans using the lesion-symptom mapping technique and correlate to developmental outcomes at 2 years. The methodology developed in this study will be crucial to inform a recently launched randomised controlled trial, ENLIVEN-UK, that is being run by neurosurgeons at GOSH and Alder Hey. The lesion-symptom mapping can be used to assess the MRIs of children included in this study, which aims to test a novel treatment, neuroendoscopic lavage, to improve brain development and thus developmental outcomes in preterm infants with IVH.

For the trainee, this project will provide transferrable skills related to clinical data analysis, neuroimaging analysis and data linkage between clinical data and large national datasets such as the NNRD. It will provide pilot data for further doctoral fellowship applications to further this work, with more advanced imaging modalities such as diffusion MRI and tractography, which are able to study the structural brain connectomes. It will also provide preliminary data for comparison with imaging data from the ENLIVEN-UK trial, which will start to become available later this year. In this way the trainee would be in a position to continue towards a PhD.

Supervisory team

Harriet Corbett, Consultant Paediatric Urologist; Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of Liverpool and Alder Hey

Rachel Harwood, Clinical Research Fellow, Paediatric Surgery Registrar, Honorary Clinical Lecturer

Bettina Wilm, Senior Lecturer, University of Liverpool

Project description

“Investigation of inflammatory pathways implicated in the development of intrinsic pelvico-ureteric junction obstruction”

Children born with congenital abnormalities of the kidneys and the urinary tract (CAKUT) have an increased risk of developing chronic kidney disease and bladder dysfunction. A recent publication by the GOSH-ICH urology team has demonstrated that the TGF-β/SMAD pathway is upregulated in bladder tissue from children with neuropathic bladder and bladder exstrophy. They have also demonstrated a reduction in smooth muscle and an increase in connective tissue in these specimens. Previous research into pelvico-ureteric junction obstruction (PUJO), a condition which affects a more proximal part of the urinary tract but with a very similar histological appearance, has also implicated the TGF-β pathway in the development of PUJO along with a similar reduction in smooth muscle and increase in connective tissue.

PUJO is very effectively treated surgically by removing and reconstructing the PUJ, making the PUJ a potentially good source of tissue. If there is evidence that the PUJ in PUJO has the same histological profile as neuropathic and exstrophy bladder, where it is more difficult to gain representative tissue, this could be used to investigate therapeutic agents which may affect the TGF-β pathway in vitro.

Within this project and with consent, both historical and new PUJ specimens will be analysed to assess the structure of the PUJ and the collagen to smooth muscle ratio within specimens. Immunofluorescence will be used to assess for the presence of TGF-β, SMAD2 and Cx43 using methods that have previously been published. The findings will be compared to previous publications to determine whether the PUJ has sufficiently similar characteristics to enable further therapeutic testing to be carried out.

Alongside this project, patients will be recruited to the RaDaR database to establish a bio-library of CAKUT conditions to facilitate further research and collaboration into this important area.

How to complete and submit your application

To submit an application for consideration, please follow the steps outlined:

  1. Please complete and submit the online form on TRAC: Link to online application
  2. As part of your application under "Supporting Information" please address the following points below:
  • Personal statement (600 words max). Please explain your reasons for applying and your motivation towards gaining training in paediatric surgical science. If a fellowship is awarded, in what way will this further your scientific goals and personal career aspirations? Please include your plans to pursue a PhD in the future. Please also include why this project is of interest to you.
  • Research experience and career to date (600 words max). Please summarise your academic background, research interests and any research experience you may have (include project details, technical skills learnt, and any outputs e.g. posters, publications, presentations)

3. Please make sure to select "Yes" for the following section and complete the details requested

  • Do you wish to provide details of any research undertaken in the last 5 years?
  • Publications in Peer Reviewed Journals
  • Prizes and Other Academic Distinctions

How your application will be reviewed

Following application submission, there will be several stages to the process of selecting candidates:

  • After submission, applications will be reviewed by members of the BRC TERM Theme and Alder Hey Paediatric Excellence Initiative Leads, as well as junior faculty representatives.
  • Shortlisted applicants will be invited to interview, which may involve one or two interview stages, and will involve senior members of the BRC and Alder Hey, and supervisors of the relevant projects. Interview dates will be confirmed shortly – please keep an eye on the main webpage for this call.

Selection criteria

Applications will be reviewed using the following selection criteria:

  • The person specification outlined in the Job Description in reference to your CV and the online application form.
  • Previous research experience and statement of research interest
  • The outline of vision by the applicant of research direction and career path. For clinical trainees this includes planned strategy to combine academic and clinical training.
  • Academic excellence and other achievements.
  • Quality of references.
  • Quality of written application.
  • Motivation for pursuing PhD in the chosen field and scientific interests.
  • Communication skills.