Congratulations to Year Two Student Louise Osborne on securing a prestigious summer studentship from the Association of Physicians for her research project with the University's Brain Infection and Inflammation Group.
Every year, grants are offered by the Association of Physicians to support undergraduates interested in a career in academic medicine. This will give me the opportunity to gain experience with a research group, in this case the Brain Infection and Inflammation Group based at Aintree Hospital, while having my living expenses catered for.
During this project I am hoping to gain first hand experience of designing and carrying out a laboratory study, while learning new laboratory techniques such as flow cytometry and getting involved in other projects going on in the lab.
The project in more detail
My medical studies so far have stimulated a curiosity in the role of inflammation in pathology; particularly as the immune response has the paradoxical ability to be either lifesaving or deadly depending on the nature of the response. Equally, neuroscience research greatly appeals to me due to its ability to help us understand the processes which drive humanity and how these can then be targeted to prevent and treat neurological and psychiatric disorders. I expressed my interest in this to my Academic Advisor Dr Mark Ellul who proposed applying for the studentship and carrying out a project related to neuroinflammatory disorders this summer.
Researching encephalitis intrigued me as, despite treatment options such as aciclovir being available, optimal management is still uncertain. Targeting the inflammatory response has been the recent cornerstone of research in inflammatory and infectious disorders, including COVID-19. This creates potential for repurposing drugs to target the immune system in the treatment of neuroinflammatory conditions such as encephalitis.
Since the optimal therapy for encephalitis is still uncertain, patients are often left with long term neurological and physical deficits, indicating that there is a clear patient group whose lives could benefit from this research.
During this project I will be using techniques such as intracellular staining on HSV-1 peptides to run an antibody panel comparing samples from patients with HSV encephalitis to positive healthy controls. This data can then be analysed to look for correlations between T cell cytokine responses to HSV and clinical outcomes.
The studentship opportunity
I expressed my interest in research to Dr Ellul early into first year, who kindly invited me to laboratory meetings with his group. This reinforced that this line of work appealed to me, therefore when Dr Ellul proposed applying for the studentship this summer I knew that this was something I wanted to do.
The application process was really easy; all it involved was a form asking questions about the proposed project and how this links to your future career aspirations, alongside some questions for your supervisor in the lab to fill out about the logistics of the project.
I was honoured and really surprised when I found out I received this opportunity, especially as it is still fairly early days into medical school for me and I have very little research experience so far.
It goes to show that even if you aren’t 100% confident you will achieve something it is still worth a shot anyway!
Looking to this summer, I am looking forward to being in a new and stimulating environment where I can learn new skills which will hopefully serve me well in my future career.
Second year has been a step up from first year there is no doubt about it, however I have really enjoyed the clinical focus of each of the system blocks and seeing how the knowledge which we are learning now could be used when caring for patients in the future.
I am looking forward to being able to experience new specialities in our placements next year (such as paediatrics); using the vast amount of clinical exposure we will get to build on the foundations learned in second year.
Discover more
- Check out our MBChB course to learn more about the clinical placement opportunities at Aintree and other leading UK sites available at Liverpool.
- Current Liverpool student doctors can take a look at Student Research on the student intranet to see how the School can support their interest in clinical research and academic medicine.
- Learn more about the pioneering research team behind the University's Brain Infection & Inflammation Group.