Dr Stephen Doyle. Image credit: Onur Pinar / Wellcome Sanger Institute

Dr Steve Doyle has been a Career Development Fellow for almost five years at the Sanger Institute. He leads an independent research group after being awarded a UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Future Leaders Fellowship in September 2020.

“By becoming a Career Development Fellow, I was able to really develop my own lines of research, and gain the independence I needed to steer my research in the direction I felt was necessary. We’re the only research team at Sanger focused on parasitic worms, and so most of our collaborators are from around the world. The Sanger Institute is a great place to do this, because of our remit in global health, so becoming a Career Development Fellow to progress my research here made sense.

“I have been asked many times - what exactly is a Career Development Fellow? Broadly, it’s an independent researcher who leads a small team, usually for the first time, and our salary and expenses are funded by external grants. It is a little different from the Faculty group leaders, who primarily receive funding from the Institute. We do, however, get lab and office space, logistics support, core facilities, and access to other opportunities within the scientific programme we’re based in, such as collaborating on big projects in which Sanger Faculty are involved.”

Steve and his team study parasitic worms that infect both humans and other animals. He is currently part of an exciting international collaboration called STOP2030, which aims to evaluate a combination therapy of two commonly used anthelmintic drugs in order to improve the treatment of soil-transmitted helminths afflicting over a billion people worldwide. Steve’s group is focused on understanding the genetic responses to drug treatment by these parasites and monitoring the emergence of drug resistance.

““Becoming a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow has opened up a great network of peers, including researchers in other institutes who are also UKRI future leaders who I get to chat to, share ideas, projects, concerns and tips. However, I also receive great mentorship from other group leaders at Sanger to share learnings or challenges.”

Dr Stephen Doyle,
Career Development Fellow, Wellcome Sanger Institute

Dr Linda Grillova. Image credit: Mona Suleiman / Wellcome Sanger Institute

Dr Linda Grillova is one of the few people in the world to be able to grow the syphilis-causing bacterium, Treponema pallidum, in the lab. She is a molecular microbiologist by background and is currently a Career Development Fellow via a BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) Discovery Fellowship at the Sanger Institute.

“I didn’t purposefully decide to become a Career Development Fellow. In fact, I didn’t even know what that was at first. I was looking for a way to become a group leader and an independent researcher. The BBSRC Discovery fellowship felt like a good step in that direction, effectively becoming a Career Development Fellow and being able to delve into the scientific questions I was interested in, growing my career and benefiting from peer support, both in the postdoctoral community and the group leaders at Sanger.

“BBSRC Discovery fellowships are awarded by UKRI and last for three years. For this grant, UKRI is looking for candidates who are strong in their field, so I was thrilled to get mine. I started working on Treponema pallidum 12 years ago during my PhD back in the Czech Republic. One of the goals of the fellowship that I was awarded is to culture T. pallidum from clinical samples taken from patients. No one has done this before and the bugs we’re working on represent historical samples that have been collected in the last century, the oldest one from 1912, and have been kept alive in rabbits since then.”

“I get asked, how did you learn about the fellowship? There are different ways. The grants team at an Institute can be helpful, for example, but I’d say to reach out to Career Development Fellows within your organisation or beyond, and simply ask them how they did it. You will have to be proactive though, write your own grant and browse the main funders to find the grant that will fit you.”

Dr Linda Grillova,
Career Development Fellow, Wellcome Sanger Institute

Dr Matthew Coelho. Image credit: Phil Mynott / Wellcome Sanger Institute

Dr Matt Coelho is a CRUK Career Development Fellow, in the Sanger Institute’s Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutations Programme. In a nutshell, he uses genomics to understand resistance to cancer therapies.

“Being a Career Development Fellow demonstrates two things: that you are successful in attracting grants and that you are in a great position to learn leadership skills. Also, becoming a Career Development Fellow at the Sanger Institute has multiple benefits; it means that the lab and equipment are already there - you don’t need to invest your grant money in setting up a lab. Research goes quicker from day one.

“I think leadership is key, you get independence and freedom to operate. This fellowship has given me time to develop my own independent research, leadership skills, network of collaborators and to start applying not only to research grants, but to translational grants too. Having my independence meant that I could focus on more translational science, and I was awarded a Sanger Translation Committee Fund in 2023 to look at preclinical drugs and predict resistance mechanisms against these drugs in patients.”

In his latest study, published in Nature Genetics, Matt and his team looked at cancer mutations and classified them in four different groups, suggesting different treatment plans. Focusing on colon, lung, and Ewing sarcoma, the research explains how known mutations impact drug resistance and highlights new DNA changes that could be explored further.

“If you are looking to advance your scientific career, this can be the step you’re looking for. Internally at Sanger, the Academic Programmes team are extremely helpful, and are keen to support others down this route, as they supported me. If you are part of a mentoring scheme it’s always worth asking your mentors about these routes. Ideally, you have a clear research pathway you want to follow, with robust science and are willing to take the leap into leading a research team.”

Dr Matthew Coelho,
Career Development Fellow, Wellcome Sanger Institute