Toby Brown

Toby

Hi, I’m Toby, a third-year student on the BHF Cardiovascular Science 4-year DPhil programme, with a research focus on the coronary microcirculation. I joined the BHF programme after three years of preclinical medicine. I was particularly attracted to the course by the mini-rotations and the opportunity to gain more experience in different lab environments. My first rotation was in the O’Callaghan lab, investigating the genetic effects of ox-LDL exposure on CD4⁺ T cells and its impact on vascular disease. During this rotation, I was closely supported while developing a new skillset in bioinformatics. This work has recently led to a first-author publication, which would not have been possible without the rotational structure of the programme. I have continued applying these new skills to my main DPhil project where we are examining the transcriptomic profile of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) phenotypes in the human coronary microcirculation. We are also developing models of VSMC phenotypic switching using specialised functional techniques from vascular physiology, collaborating across the Dora lab and the Smart lab. I continue to benefit from co-supervision and collaboration across different vascular research groups during my DPhil. The BHF 4-year DPhil studentship programme at Oxford is an exciting place to be, with so much choice across vascular biology and the unique opportunity to shape your project by collaborating with different groups.

Find out more about the BHF Cardiovascular Science programme