Research centres of excellence in Barcelona offer PhD fellowships to medical doctors.
Called PhD4MD, the programme allows medical doctors to carry out a three-year doctoral thesis on cancer, rare disease or neurodegenerative conditions.
The Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the Vall d’Hebron Instituto de Investigación (VHIR) launch the third year of the training programme “PhD for Medical Doctors – PhD4MD”.
The first initiative of its kind in Spain, this programme allows medical doctors to gain advanced research training. The aim is to bring basic research and clinical practice closer, thus speeding up the transfer of lab results to the bedside.
Translational research
This year the programme is offering five three-year fellowships for medical doctors who have completed their residency or who will complete it before 31 October 2017. Participants in this initiative will be able to choose from a range of collaborative projects underway between, on the one hand, CRG, CNAG-CRG, and IRB Barcelona—all internally recognised centres devoted to the life sciences—and, on the other, IDIBAPS or VHIR—leading centres in translational research that are linked to the Hospital Clínico and Hospital Universitario Vall d’Hebron, respectively.
The principal investigators of the research centres have explored potential collaboration projects between basic and applied research groups. In this regard, several interdisciplinary projects are included in this call and include, among others, the identification of new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for rare diseases and neurodegenerative conditions and genomics approaches to study and treat various kinds of cancer.
The call opens today (Friday 17 February) and ends on 31 March. Applications from medical doctors with degrees from member states of the European Union who can provide proof of completion of an equivalent residency are also eligible.
More information about the PhD4MD Programme and the centres involved:
Web PhD4MD: http://www.phd4md.eu/
Centro de Regulación Genómica (CRG): www.crg.eu
Instituto de Investigación Biomédica (IRB Barcelona): www.irbbarcelona.org
Vall d’Hebron Instituto de Investigación (VHIR): www.vhir.org
Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS): http://www.idibaps.org
Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG): http://www.cnag.crg.eu
IRB Barcelona PhD student Marcos Fernández is one of three researchers featured in the article published today in El Mundo, following Friday's ceremony in Madrid, where 68 young scientists received their "la Caixa" doctoral fellowships.
Since the end of 2016, this 25-year old Madrid native has been working towards his PhD degree in the Translational Control of Cell Cycle and Differentiation lab led by ICREA researcher Raúl Méndez. Marcos is studying protein synthesis in several types of tumours.
Today in the La Vanguardia newspaper, Josep Corbella devotes an article to Barcelona's support of research with applications in regenerative medicine.
In EMBO Molecular Medicine, IRB Barcelona scientists report a technique based on a combination of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing and patient-derived tumour organoids that allows the study of cell heterogeneity in human tumours.
The novel approach was used to examine the behaviour of colorectal cancer stem cells by tracing specific marker genes.
