Biomedical and Clinical Sciences

Successful applicants will work towards a DPhil within one of three streams which are in basic sciences, mental and cognitive health, and translational/experimental medicine.

You will be offered generic research training and required to meet standard University milestones for progress. All students are formally monitored via supervisor feedback forms submitted three times per year.

This stream aims to provide high-quality research training in basic and applied molecular science for clinical academics who aspire to a career in academic medicine. It is expected that you will carry out DPhil projects in one of the following broad areas:

• metabolism
• genomics
• haematology
• infection/immunity/inflammation
• neurobiology
• cardiovascular
• rheumatology related disease, including the process of inflammation, damage and repair.

Training provision is tailored to your needs, in relation to your research project and determined in consultation with supervisors, mentor and programme directors.

It is expected that you will have both basic-scientist and clinician-scientist supervisors, to bridge the gap between basic and applied research.

This stream aims to recruit clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists to the DPhil programme and place them into internationally-recognised research groups that have successfully developed new treatments, clinical assessments and rehabilitation procedures and/or novel experimental medicine approaches to psychopharmacology.

You should expect to receive core teaching in a range of skills important for clinical research in mental and cognitive health. These may include: experimental design, structured clinical interviews, cognitive testing, programming experiments MATLAB/using E-Prime/SuperLab etc, design and analysis of clinical trials, acquisition and analysis of fMRI and other imaging data.

In addition, Oxford has exceptional multimodal imaging facilities to which you should have access. If appropriate for your research, you will normally be able to join the FMRIB graduate training programme.

Throughout the DPhil course, students on this stream will have a weekly day-long placement in a unit that conducts clinical work closely related to your research programme, in order to:

• observe how research and clinical implementation can work together
• continue to develop your clinical skills

Each placement normally lasts for twelve months, during which you should have the opportunity to work in units that aim to help you observe translational work in a complementary area to your research. In this way, the programme aims to equip you with the skills you need to ensure that, when relevant, you can rapidly translate your future research findings into patient benefit.

You will be required to meet standard University milestones for progress and will be monitored formally via supervisor feedback forms submitted three times per year.

This is a new theme, introduced to take advantage of other strengths in biomedical science. These include projects in:

• the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, which provides a unique environment where engineers and clinicians work together, focusing on novel technological approaches to healthcare problems;
• vaccinology through the Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group, where novel vaccine approaches for infection and also non-infectious targets such as cancer are developed and tested through clinical trials;
• veterinary science in collaboration with the Pirbright Institute (formerly the Institute of Animal Health) and the Royal Veterinary College in conjunction with the Jenner Institute and Wellcome-funded projects (eg in orthopaedics and in neuromuscular disease) and an interdisciplinary training initiative on Innovative Food Systems Teaching and Learning;
• translational and applied neurosciences including advanced neuro-imaging available through the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Building (fMRIB) and novel PET approaches with Imanova, interfacing with scientists with skills in physics and big data;
• major non-communicable diseases through the Nuffield Department of Population Health, Clinical Trials Service Unit, and Epidemiologic Studies Unit, and the new Big Data Institute (BDI), focusing on the analysis of large, complex, heterogeneous data sets for research into the causes and consequences, prevention and treatment of disease. Ethox, also based in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, provides an environment where empirical research and ethical analyses can be combined around clinical ethics, research ethics, and global/population health ethics; and
• international health and tropical medicine, building on collaborations between Oxford investigators and its major overseas programmes with bases in Kenya, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology has more than 25 research groups working in the areas of immunity and microbiome, inflammation biology and tissue remodelling and regeneration. The Institute has close ties with nearby clinical centres in Oxford and beyond, which provide a gateway to patient cohorts in inflammatory arthritis, osteoarthritis, cancer and inflammatory bowel disease that enable translation from bench to bedside. Examples of translational initiatives include The Arthritis Therapy Acceleration Programme (A-TAP), which was launched to speed up the delivery of better treatments for Immune Mediated inflammatory Diseases (IMIDs). This programme targets the underlying causes of disease by applying innovative trial design allowing repurposed or new drugs to be tried out across a range of IMIDs, with success determined through tissue biomarkers rather than clinical outcomes. The programme is initially focusing on rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, Sjogren’s syndrome and seronegative spondyloarthropathies. The Institute also houses the Arthritis Research UK Centre for Osteoarthritis (OA) Pathogenesis, which seeks to create a seamless transition from molecular discovery through pre-clinical modelling to experimental medicine in OA. Additional translational programmes include those in Dupytren’s disease, fibrosis, and fracture repair.

For this course, the allocation of graduate supervision is the responsibility of the Medical Sciences Doctoral Training Centre, and it is not always possible to accommodate the preferences of incoming graduate students to work with a particular member of staff. Under exceptional circumstances a supervisor may be found outside the Medical Sciences Doctoral Training Centre.

Most graduates from this programme continue in academic research in prestigious laboratories worldwide.

Changes to this course and your supervision

The University will seek to deliver this course in accordance with the description set out in this course page. However, there may be situations in which it is desirable or necessary for the University to make changes in course provision, either before or after registration. In certain circumstances, for example due to visa difficulties or because the health needs of students cannot be met, it may be necessary to make adjustments to course requirements for international study.

Where possible your academic supervisor will not change for the duration of your course. However, it may be necessary to assign a new academic supervisor during the course of study or before registration for reasons which might include sabbatical leave, parental leave or change in employment.

For further information, please see our page on changes to courses.

Other courses you may wish to consider

Applicants are strongly advised to visit the Medical Sciences Graduate School website to help them identify the most suitable course and supervisors.

If you're thinking about applying for this course, you may also wish to consider the courses listed below. These courses may have been suggested due to their similarity with this course, or because they are offered by the same department or faculty.

Courses suggested by the centre

Clinical Medicine DPhil
Medical Sciences DPhil
Molecular Cell Biology in Health and Disease DPhil
Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics DPhil
Clinical Neurosciences DPhil
Surgical Sciences DPhil
Musculoskeletal Sciences DPhil
Molecular and Cellular Medicine DPhil
Experimental Psychology DPhil
Psychiatry DPhil
Neuroscience MSc
Neuroscience DPhil
Oncology DPhil

All graduate courses offered by the Medical Sciences Doctoral Training Centre

Biomedical and Clinical Sciences DPhil

Cancer Science DPhil

Cardiovascular Science DPhil

Cellular Structural Biology DPhil

Chemistry in Cells: New Technologies to Probe Complex Biology and Medicine DPhil

Computational Discovery DPhil

Genomic Medicine and Statistics DPhil

Ion Channels and Membrane Transport in Health and Disease (OXION) DPhil

Neuroscience combined MSc and DPhil

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Entry requirements