The University of Leeds is the second largest University in the UK and has just been ranked 14th in the UK based on grade point average in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. The Medical School which is part of the Faculty of Medicine and Health is divided between the main campus located in the city centre, and the St James.s University Hospital campus approximately 1 mile further out which is where we are located. There is a vibrant research environment on the St James's University Hospital campus. Since merging with the Leeds General Infirmary, the resultant Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is the largest in the UK. St James's University Hospital is one of the largest teaching hospitals in Europe, providing an ideal opportunity for clinical-scientific collaboration and translational research in a wide range of areas. A major new Research Institute and a new Oncology Wing have opened recently on this campus.

The hospital's Bexley Wing which opened in December 2007 has been built at a cost of £220 million and represents the centralisation of all cancer-related services and activity for the city in one site in the St James.s Institute of Oncology. This is one of the largest oncology centres in Europe (66,000 m2 on 11 floors) and includes 350 beds, all non-surgical oncology and haematology facilities, diagnostic radiology and pathology services, and much of the specialist cancer surgery and radiotherapy service, serving the population of West and much of North Yorkshire (approximately 3 million people).

The new Research Institute building (The Wellcome Trust Brenner Building) encompasses 7,700 m2 on 8 floors and has been built at a total cost of £20 million, partly funded under the JIF initiative. T This building is linked to the existing Cancer Research UK Clinical Centre building and the Clinical Sciences Building, and is adjacent to the Genetic Epidemiology Unit, collectively forming the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine (LIMM), which houses in excess of 500 researchers. Within this Institute, research groupings in stem cell biology, vision research, pathology, rheumatology, immunology, haematology, molecular genetics and many areas of cancer research including applied immunotherapy, molecular genetics, biomarkers, clinical trials, genetic epidemiology and biostatistics, and cancer cell biology are hosted. The Coordinating Centre for the National Cancer Research Network (NCRN) and the National Coordinating Centre for Clinical Research Networks (UKCRN) are also located in Leeds and are part of LIMM. The National Coordinating Centres work on behalf of the Department of Health to manage and support nationwide clinical research activities for cancer research, since 2001, and from 2005 for a wider range of healthcare priorities. There are currently approximately 320 postgraduate students in the Medical School studying for a PhD, MD or MPhil, over half of whom are based on the St James's site. There is a well-stocked medical library and a regular seminar program takes place weekly.

The Research facilities available and being introduced with the new Institute initiative are world-class. In addition to the usual lab apparatus, there are centralised facilities for multicolour FACS sorting and analysis and DNA sequencing and access to confocal microscopy, nucleic acid microarray facilities and laser capture microdissection.

The group is based in well-equipped newly refurbished labs in the adjacent Cancer Research UK and Clinical Sciences buildings on the St James.s hospital campus.



Clinical sample processing takes place in a purpose-designed lab with ongoing work introducing all the necessary systems/processes and sample tracking software (being written built in house) for future operation at a level compliant with GCLP recommendations.

In addition to processing and storing a variety of clinical fluids and tissue for our own biomarker studies, we also undertake sample processing and banking for clinical trials run by various companies or academic Institutes, either as part of local clinical participation or in national/international coordinating role.



Equipment for proteomics studies includes mini-, mid- and large format 1D- and 2D-PAGE/DIGE equipment with multiple rigs allowing large numbers of gels to be run simultaneously, 3 Typhoon scanners for imaging and 2 spot picking robots for semi-automated spot excision. Gel analysis is through SameSpots.



Our equipment base for mass spectrometry is currently being extended. At present we have an ABI QSTAR with electrospray source together with Agilent nano-LC system to allow LC/LC-MS/MS based approaches.




In early 2009 we will be installing a MALDI-TOF-TOF to allow further LC-MS/MS-based approaches but also to develop tissue imaging and to allow the migration of peptide profiling studies from our current SELDI (Enterprise 4000) to MALDI with alternative pre-fractionation. We also hope to obtain funding for further expansion of our MS/MS capabilities in the near future.









For prefractionation work, Agilent 1100 LC systems with various immunodepletion columns and more conventional columns for separation based on physic-chemical properties are used extensively.



The infrastructure for the storage, processing and analysis of all data is based on a cluster of dual processor Xeon and Opteron servers running Linux. Data is stored on a main server with a RAID 5 file system for data security, with the associated calculation nodes being configured to operate as a single virtual machine for computationally intensive analysis.

We currently have no vacancies within our group. However, if you are potentially interested in coming to work or study with our group then please contact us. There may be opportunities to apply for specific grants or studentships.

Any vacancies that we have are always advertised here or www.jobs.ac.uk in accordance with the Equal Opportunities policy adopted by the NHS, Leeds University and Cancer Research UK. Additionally vacancies may be advertised in publications such as New Scientist or Nature. Applications should be made as detailed in the relevant advertisements.

For Postgraduate Research Degrees, we advertise annually in December each year for the next October input for full time PhDs. MD vacancies are usually advertised in the British Medical Journal as part of Clinical Research Fellowships.

The Research activities are currently supported by Programme funding from Cancer Research UK and National Institute for Health Research together with specific project and equipment grants from Cancer Research UK, Medical Research Council, Department of Trade and Industry, Parkinson's Disease Society and Special Trustees. Additionally we have industrial research collaborations in several specific project areas.