Oxford-BMS Fellowship

This prestigious 3-year Fellowship (formerly Oxford-Celgene Fellowship) aims to stimulate new scientific discovery and translation and to facilitate skills and people transfer between researchers in academia and industry.

Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is a global biopharmaceutical company making advancements in oncology, haematology, immunology and cardiovascular disease. BMS are dedicated to helping patients prevail over serious diseases through a diverse and promising pipeline and new scientific platforms.

BMS acquired Celgene in 2019. Prior to 2019, in partnership with the Oxford Medical Sciences Division, Celgene co-developed and provided support for fellowships which will continue as the Oxford-BMS Translational Research Fellowship Programme.

The goals of this scheme are to stimulate new scientific discovery and translation and to facilitate skills and people transfer between researchers in academia and industry.

This programme offers fellows an opportunity to gain exposure to the field of commercial drug discovery and development. Fellows will have an assigned company mentor and where appropriate be encouraged to spend some time based in BMS laboratories.

Funding will be awarded to Oxford Principal Investigators to support 3 year fellowship projects for early career researchers that demonstrate a clear translational value to the advancement of therapeutics. Three to four awards are made annually.

Currently there are 24 fellows working with BMS and you can read about their projects here.

Principle Investigators should apply for fellowship funding to support clinical (Grade E64) or basic research scientists (Grade 7/8) committed to translational science and interested in obtaining experience with drug development in an industrial setting.

Fellowship applications may include a named fellow, but this is not mandatory. It is expected that a suitable fellowship candidate will be identified by the Principle Investigator within 6 months of notification of successful project selection.

The proposed fellowship needs to align with BMS’s fields of interest as listed below.

1. Novel targets, biomarkers, cellular therapeutic approaches, or translational models in one of the following areas:

immuno-oncology;
neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, FTD and MS;
fibrosing disorders including IPF, NASH, scleroderma, and Renal Fibrosis;
rheumatic and dermatologic disorders including RA, SLE, spondyloarthropathies, psoriasis and atopic dermatitis;
haematologic disorders including AML, Myeloma, DLBCL;
chronic heart failure (either with preserved or reduced ejection fraction).

2. Methods for evaluating biochemical, cellular, tissue and phenotypic consequences of
modulating epigenetic targets.

3. Methods for immuno-phenotyping of human subjects in oncology and autoimmunity

4. Novel imaging approaches to measuring disease activity in the above areas.

now open for new applications - december 2020

Prospective Principle Investigator applicants should read this application guidance

Stage 1 - Pre-application and meeting with BMS

The Oxford-BMS Fellowship Programme strongly encourages you to take pre-application steps before submitting your full application.

The pre-application steps ensure that your proposal is in line with BMS’s areas of research interest and involves a pre-application form and a meeting with BMS (held virtually).

Stage 2 - Full application

Full applications are made on the full application form and should be emailed, along with the draft X5 costing to charlotte.bell@medsci.ox.ac.uk.

Please consult the guidance document for details on the application process.

Come along to one of four information session to find out how to apply for an Oxford-Bristol Myers Squibb (formerly Celgene) Fellowship. We will talk you through the background to the fellowships scheme, give details about BMS areas of interest and explain the application process. This will be followed by a Q&A session.

The 2021 competition has now closed.

Please check this webpage in December 2021 for details of future competitions.

For all enquiries please contact Charlotte Bell, Business Partnerships Manager, Medical Sciences Division, Business Partnerships Office

Email: charlotte.bell@medsci.ox.ac.uk

Telephone: 01865 289877

JOINT STEERING COMMITTEE

Professor Sir Marc Feldmann (Oxford)

Professor Fiona Powrie (Oxford)

Professor Irene Tracey (Oxford)

Professor Chas Bountra (Oxford)

Dr. Maxine Allen (Oxford)

Dr. Rupert Vessey (BMS)

Dr. Leon Carayannopoulos (BMS)

Dr. James Carmichael (BMS)

Dr. Anjan Thakurta (BMS)

Current Fellows


Nora Bengoa-Vergniory	Liam Brown	Pablo Cespedes
'Inhibition of alpha-synuclein aggregation and glial activation as a therapeutic strategy for Parkinson’s disease'	'A computational framework for T cell trafficking and dynamics in anti-tumour immune responses'	'Studying the effects of citrullination on the dynamics of receptor-ligand pair interactions at the Immune Synapse'
PI: Richard Wade-Martins	PI: Mark Coles, Eamonn Gaffney

Hebe Chen	Liliana Cifuentes	Amy Cross
'Investigation of epigenetic and post-translational modifications in altered STAT3'	'Protein kinase C-θ and PD-1 as a therapeutic target in inflammatory arthritis'	'Combination therapy of low dose regulatory T cells and low dose IL-2 to prevent rejection in transplantation'
PI: Professor Holm Uhlig & Dr. Arian Laurence	PI: Graham Ogg, Peter Taylor, Mike Dustin	PI: Dr Joanna Hester & Dr Fadi Issa

Ruxandra Dafinca	Melanie Dunstan	Michael Fitzpatrick
'Targeting intracellular trafficking and nucleocytoplasmic transport in mouse and human motor neurons carrying ALS mutations in TDP-43'	'Ultra low-dose IL-2 therapy in autoimmune diabetes'	'Use of unbiased T-cell receptor repertoire sequencing to identify novel T-cell subsets involved in coeliac disease and increase the accuracy of the diagnosis of gluten sensitivity'
PI: Kevin Talbot	PI: John Todd, Claudia Monaco	PI: Elizabeth Soilleux, Paul Klennerman

Stefania Giussani	Sarah Gooding	Tariq Khoyratty
'Investigation of T cell reactivity to alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's disease'	'Determining changes in clonal/sub clonal architecture and relation to immune marrow environment enabling tumour persistence/relapse in myeloma'	'Defining an early signature of neutrophil extracellular trap formative predictive of responses to PAD4/2 inhibitors in rheumatic patients'
	PI: Paresh Vyas, Udo Oppermann, Karthik Ramasamy	PI: Irina Udalova, Raashid Luqman

Kate Lines	Sarah Sasson
'Targeting Epigenetic Mechanisms for the Treatment of Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumours'	'Checkpoint blockade-mediated autoimmune colitis as a model for gut immune homeostasis'
PI: Rajesh Thakker	PI: Paul Klenerman, Oliver Brain

Past Fellows


Hannah Chen	Thomas Layton	Heidi Olzscha
'Definition of new drug targets for fibrosis in Crohns'	'Single cell analysis of the fibrotic landscape in Dupuytren's Disease'	'Unravelling the role of E2F-1 citrullination in inflammatory disease'
PI: Alison Simmons	PI: Jagdeep Nanchahal	PI: Nick La Thangue

Lynn Quek
'Clonal and Functional heterogeneity in AG221-treated IDH2 mutant Acute Myeloid Leukaemia'
PI: Paresh Vyas