Phenome wide association studies of the human leukocyte antigen region

The Wellcome Trust Programme is offering 1 UK-funded place to start in January 2025.

The successful candidate will join a cohort of seven other students on the DTP, who started in September 2024. Please note that due to funding restrictions, we cannot consider overseas applicants at this time.

Project

The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes code proteins that present foreign antigens to the adaptive immune system, providing protection from pathogens. HLA genes are also heavily associated with several autoimmune diseases which have higher prevalence in females. The full impact of the HLA on human disease is not completely understood and has not been fully explored in resources such as UK Biobank. 

To answer these questions the project will use genetic and healthcare data from the 500,000 participants in UK Biobank with advanced genomic techniques to impute the HLA region and perform phenome wide association analyses (PheWAS) and sex interaction analyses, progressing to analysis of sequenced data. The analyses would be the largest of its kind and provide significant insights into the wide-ranging effects of the HLA on human disease and the role of that sex plays in combination with the HLA. 

Anticipated new data and established industry partnerships provide for several possible project extensions and/or an industry placement, including the study of other complex genomic variation, gene-gene interactions, multi-ancestry studies and use of findings to inform drug development. The project would suit a student with strong computational skills and a biological/genomics knowledge. Strong statistical skills would be an advantage. 

This project is part of the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Programme in Genomic Epidemiology and Public Health Genomics at the University of Leicester. Two other projects are being advertised as part of this Programme and the successful candidate will join 7 other students who started the DTP in September 2024. More details about the Programme can be found at www.le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/wellcome-trust-dtp.

Open to UK Applicants only for January 2025 start

Informal enquiries

For project enquiries please contact the project supervisor in the first instance.

Administration and general enquiries to genomicsphd@leicester.ac.uk

To apply please refer to our website https://le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/funded-opportunities/wellcome-trust