Future Fund PhD Studentships
Many donors have together funded the Future Fund PhD Studentships.
Lexie Urqhuart is a fully funded PhD student working within the field of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Her research uses stem cells to try and find out more about the disease with the ultimate aim of developing a model that can then be used to test potential treatments for MND.
We caught up with Lexie and her supervisor, Dr Helen Devine to find out more.
Can you please tell us a little bit more about your area of research?
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease which is caused by the death of motor nerves also known as motor neurones. Motor neurones travel from the brain, via the spinal cord, to the muscles and carry the messages telling them to move so that we can move around, speak, swallow, and breathe. In MND the motor neurones die, and this leads to paralysis, and ultimately death, typically within 5 years of diagnosis. There are currently no treatments for MND.
Our research is focused on trying to understand why motor neurones die in MND by using motor nerves grown from stem cells to study MND in a dish. We hope to ultimately test potential treatments in the future.
How is Lexie’s PhD contributing to this research?
Helen - There is a huge amount of work going on in the field of motor neurone disease! We can’t take motor neurones out of people while they are still alive as they don’t grow back again, which has made research in this area very difficult. One of the biggest discoveries from the last 15-20 years, which has helped us to understand diseases, is the ability to take skin cells and turn them back into stem cells. These stem cells can then be taken and made into any other type of cell in the body.
Lexie - I am interested in the neuromuscular junction, which is the connection between motor neurones and the muscle. I’m developing a model of the neuromuscular junction, by creating it in a dish using stem cells. I will grow motor neurones and muscle from skin cells of patients who have motor neurone disease. These are then compared to motor neurones and muscle from stem cells of people who don’t have MND to help us see what’s going wrong in MND and allow us to try different drugs to stop the cells dying.
What do you hope are the outcomes of this research?
Helen - Ultimately it all comes down to patients and trying to improve things for them, as a clinician that is my key focus and the science is the way to try and improve things for them, that’s what we want to do.
Hopefully an outcome of this research will be to develop a model that can then be used to allow us to test different drugs and treatments for MND. One of the great things is being able to do the discovery science but ultimately having a pipeline into helping patients with MND. Lexie is going to try and test different drugs on the NMJ model and then we will try to take a potential drug through to the point of testing whether they are safe and can go into clinical trials.
In Newcastle, we are part of a national trial called Experts ALS which is all about getting treatments into patients. EXPERTS-ALS is a UK wide network of MND researchers who are all working together to try and develop a treatment and improve the lives of patients with MND. I think it’s really important that we are part of that eco-system.
Lexie - Collaborative working is a great part of the role that I hadn’t had experience of beforehand. What we do here is one part of the bigger picture, like a jigsaw, and it’s nice when working collaboratively to see all those other pieces coming together. It puts the work we are doing into perspective.
That sounds absolutely fascinating and very rewarding. Lexie, is this an area that you have always wanted to work in?
I’ve always been interested in stem cell research. I learnt a lot about the future of research in this area at university and thought it sounded really interesting. I’d heard about MND but I hadn’t really thought about a career in it as such, but then this project came up and it sounded so interesting. The different techniques and skills that I would learn along the way were unlike any other project I had seen.
It’s a really exciting field of research because there is so much more to learn and there is so much more that we need to find out.
How has the fundraising support for Lexie’s PhD helped to develop this research?
Lexie - I don’t think I would have been able to do all the different things that I have done and that I’m hoping to do in the future without the support of funding for my PhD.
For example, there’s a facility downstairs that I’m hoping to use which will allow me to do electrophysiology. I didn’t think this is something I would ever get the opportunity to do, but there’s scope in the project for me to be able to learn and add to the project to boost it and give it more proving methods.
Helen - The funding we have received has made it possible for Lexie to be able to pursue a PhD and develop her skills. Not only has it inspired Lexie to stay within science and within the field, its also giving her the opportunity to develop her scientific skills. Alongside the research she has also been involved in presentations, getting to the finals of the 3-minute thesis, and recently been selected to go to a public engagement event in MND. There’s so many different skills that she’s learning from it.
From my perspective, I’m a relatively new Principal Investigator (PI) and so having a PhD student in the lab has had a massive impact on my career too. The philanthropic support has had an impact on the whole team and project. Motor Neurone disease is a key priority for the current UK government and so the support within this area and trying to increase the opportunities and research being done within neuroscience in Newcastle can only be a good thing.