Advancing in vitro fish models for assessing environmental pharmaceutical risk: Integrating spatial-temporal kinetics of pharmaceutical uptake

This interdisciplinary project will employ a multi-cellular and omic approach to characterised spatial-temporal kinetics of biotransformation, metabolism, and effect in a multi-component in vitro fish model. Cultured gill cells will be combined with liver organoids to mimic the absorption and metabolism properties of whole organisms facilitating more accurate environmental pharmaceutical risk assessment. The work will be based at Cardiff University, but there will be opportunities to spend time working at the University of Exeter, AstraZeneca, Global Environment site at Alderley Park, Macclesfield and other collaborating laboratories.

The spatial-temporal imaging of transcript and metabolite changes will be used to resolve the specific cells impacted by parent compound, identify cells responsible for biotransformation & characterise the production & effect of xenobiotic metabolites this generated. This multi-omics project will validate the use of multi-component in vitro model for predicting environmental pharmaceutical risk.

The student will become expert in state-of-the art spatial transcriptomic and targeted metabolomics together with the associated bioinformatics. Laboratory skills including in vitro cell culture, a range of molecular approaches including qPCR & genetic manipulation, cellular imaging including sheet and confocal microscopy. All are fields at the cutting edge of ecotoxicological research.