Biochemistry PhD candidate

Tell us about your background?

Hello, I'm Hannah and I'm currently doing a PhD in biochemistry on the AstraZeneca/University of Cambridge programme. Before my PhD, I did an undergraduate biochemistry degree at the University of Nottingham. I've always been particularly interested in pharmacology and during my undergraduate course, I spent two summers doing summer placements in the pharmacology and cell signalling group at Nottingham as well as a year in industry at AstraZeneca.

Tell us about your PhD project?

My PhD project is aiming to develop a peptide inhibitor for a protein which is very frequently mutated across several cancers. The project primarily involves protein engineering and structure based design. Most of my work is carried out in the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University, but my supervisors at AstraZeneca help to guide the direction of my project and I will definitely also be going to work at their site at some point.

What prompted you to pursue a PhD project which includes a pharmaceutical industry partner?

I really enjoyed my placement year in AstraZeneca and this inspired me to find PhDs, which had industry involvement. I knew that retaining links with industry could open many doors for me for the future, as well as providing access to additional expertise and facilities throughout my PhD. I also think that having a industry partner can enable your PhD work to have wider impact and there's even the possibility that your project can be continued by the partner and be used to develop medicines and the future.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced your experience?

During the first year of my PhD, my lab had limited capacity, which meant that I couldn't get going with experiments as quickly as I would have liked. My supervisor also couldn't come in, and so a lot of my initial training was done virtually which presented some difficulties. Saying this overall I don't think the pandemic has affected my work too much. It has also made me really appreciate the community of my lab now things are back to normal.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years' time?

My current plan for after my PhD is to work at a small biotech and to hopefully eventually take on a team leader role there. This plan is constantly changing though, and I think having an industry partner for my PhD allows me to open my eyes to the many opportunities that we have as PhD graduates, while some other PhD students can be quite blinkered, in on academia.