About the Project

Once considered a rare disease, bronchiectasis has become increasingly incident and prevalent worldwide and is now recognised as the third most common chronic respiratory disease. It is characterised by progressive, irreversible widening of the bronchi, arising from a vicious cycle of impaired mucus clearance, recurrent respiratory infections, dysregulated inflammatory response and airway damage.

Despite its growing global burden, the biological mechanisms driving bronchiectasis remain poorly understood, and there are currently no licensed drug treatments, leaving patients with limited therapeutic options. Genomic association studies are a powerful approach to uncover mechanistic insights into disease biology and identify potential targets for new treatments.

In this project, you will investigate the genetic architecture of bronchiectasis using large-scale genomic datasets from evolving population-based biobanks and clinical cohorts. Using advanced bioinformatics and statistical genetic methodologies, you will identify genetic variants, genes and pathways associated with bronchiectasis susceptibility and progression, which will advance biological understanding and reveal new opportunities for drug development.

You will be supported by supervisors with expertise in respiratory genomics and statistical genetics, as well as experience with methodological approaches and datasets that will be explored in this project.

Project enquiries to Dr Kayesha Coley kayesha.coley@leicester.ac.uk

Application advice please email pgrapply@le.ac.uk