Dr Sara Boyd

Dr Sara Boyd is a Specialist Registrar in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in London. She completed undergraduate medical training at the University of Dundee in 2009.

Sara BoydDr Boyd's early postgraduate clinical training involved significant exposure to General Internal Medicine in the West of Scotland with completion of MRCP (UK) and Infectious Diseases training in Sheffield.  She completed the Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 2013 and was subsequently awarded an NIHR Academic  Clinical Fellowship (ACF) at Imperial College London.  During this time she worked within a multidisciplinary research team at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Healthcare Associated Infection and Antimicrobial Resistance under the supervision of Professor Alison Holmes.  As an ACF in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology she developed research interests in antimicrobial resistance, pharmacology and drug development.
 
In 2017, she was the recipient of an MRC awarded RCUK/UKRI Innovation Fellowship in Antimicrobial Pharmacology through the North West England MRC Fellowship Scheme in Clinical Pharmacology.  While her clinical work is carried out across Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, her PhD fellowship spans a collaboration between the Centre for Antimicrobial Pharmacodynamics at the University of Liverpool and Roche Pharmaceuticals.  Sara's PhD aims to help to accelerate the development of new drugs for pneumonia.  She is the national trainee representative for the British Infection Association, in addition to representing colleagues nationally at the Royal College of Physicians’ Specialty Advisory Committee for Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine.

Developing new drugs for pneumonia in the era of antimicrobial resistance

Sara’s research involves the pre-clinical evaluation of antimicrobials across a range of models of infection and the construction of mathematical models that describe pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) relationships. Using state-of-the-art techniques, Sara is exploring methods to help drug development programmes identify compounds and regimens for patients with pneumonia that are safe, effective and reduce the emergence of resistance. This research aims to facilitate more informed ‘go/no-go’ decisions when considering early phase clinical trials of new drugs for pneumonia. Sara’s research is supervised by Professor William Hope (Liverpool), Dr Richard Peck (Roche) and Professor Alison Holmes (Imperial).

S.E.Boyd@liverpool.ac.uk

Working with industry

During her fellowship Dr Boyd has worked with Roche. She says:

My involvement with Roche has been key to the planning and successful execution of my doctoral research. My industry supervisor integrated me within his team early on, and has supported my research throughout the 3 year fellowship programme. I have produced some of my most novel and high quality PhD data through the industry collaboration and have thoroughly enjoyed contrasting the academic and industry approaches to science.”

 

Back to: North West England MRC Fellowship Scheme in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics