In vitro efficacy of drug candidates identified by in silico connectivity mapping

Context of funding request: Jency Rajan is a 2nd year PhD researcher at, based in the Personalised Medicine Centre, an Ulster University translational and clinical research institute based at Altnagelvin Hospital, Londonderry. Her research project is focussed using artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytic pipelines to screen and repurpose of licensed drugs not currently prescribed as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. This project is supervised by Dr Shu-Dong Zhang and Dr David Gibson, who bring connectivity mapping and rheumatology biomarker expertise, respectively. The project has reach a stage where several promising drug leads have emerged from robust in silico analysis, which now require verification of efficacy potential in vitro. We are requesting costs to support the in vitro experiments which are not currently covered by the Department for economy PhD stipend. The funding support requested will add greatly to the upskilling of the PhD researcher in wet lab techniques such as cell culture, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and ELISA.