About us

  • The lifeTIME CDT is a partnership between the University of Glasgow, the University of Birmingham, Aston University and CÚRAM – Science Foundation Ireland.

    We will train innovation leaders for the non-animal technology and regenerative medicine sectors, with multidisciplinary, high-value skills in the design, creation and application of new knowledge to accelerate therapeutic discovery.

    Finding a Better Way

    Current drug discovery strategies have major shortcomings that can be improved:

    1. Genomic and high-throughput technologies are driving the volume of new drug leads, but despite this volume, the number of successes has remained static; there is a productivity crisis.
    2. Overly simple in vitro screens and non-human animal models are not predicting fails and so close to 40% of new drug fails are discovered during human trials.

    The lifETIME CDT thus focuses on development of non-animal technologies to improve predictive power of pre-clinical drug screens and thus drive medicines discovery.

    In this programme we have partners from industry (Pharma, contract research organisations, small enterprises), the NHS, regulatory bodies and leading charities who will work with our students. Also, as the CDT is based at Universities of Glasgow, Birmingham, Aston and Galway, we will work with these academic partners to create a national cohort of new talent to drive this sector. This cohort will support each other throughout their careers working to bring better health to the UK and beyond.

    Students will be hosted in dynamic labs and will have the opportunity for travel around the UK / Ireland and the rest of the world. If you are looking for a PhD programme in the field, you should join this CDT if you want to perform exciting science, become a leader in the field, develop a network of like-minded talent and thus grow the UK drug discovery sector.

    Read what current PhD students have to say