PhD studentship in Regenerative Biology

An opportunity has arisen for a 3-year PhD studentship within the Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the Royal Veterinary College funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences and the RVC.

The successful applicant will join the team of Dr Caroline Pellet-Many who is interested in understanding the role of Neuropilins in heart regeneration using the cryoinjury model of myocardial infarction (MI) in zebrafish.  Using this model that mimics heart attacks in zebrafish, we showed that Neuropilin1 and 2 (nrp1 and nrp2) are upregulated in the regenerating zebrafish heart and that Nrp1a plays a role in the epicardial activation and angiogenesis. Little is known about Nrp2’s role in cardiac physiology, yet it is highly expressed by cardiomyocytes and inflammatory cells in zebrafish, rodents, and humans. Our recent transcriptome analysis of murine macrophages demonstrated that NRP1 and NRP2 are differentially expressed in inflammatory and anti-inflammatory macrophages and, accordingly, their knock-out resulted in a differential regulation of major inflammatory pathways. Therefore, the PhD student will focus on investigating how neuropilins modulate macrophage gene expression and phenotype during heart regeneration.

Dr Pellet-Many welcomes informal enquiries about the project (cpelletmany@rvc.ac.uk), enquiries about admissions should be directed to: admissions@rvc.ac.uk

Application opened until the 04/06/2023.