Research interests
Research Mission: to investigate protein post-translational modifications and hormones in cardiovascular and brain disease.
Research Vision: to develop ideas and biochemical tools that enable prevention, early diagnosis, monitoring and targeting of disease.
Current externally funded projects:
1. Role of arginine methylation of cardiac troponin I in cardiovascular disease, funded by The Hull and East Riding Cardiac Trust (HERCTF), £29,875. January-December 2019. Link to HERCTF: https://sites.google.com/view/herctf/home
2. Developing tissue-on-chip technology as a platform to measure the response of glioblastoma to established therapy and novel drugs (GBM-on-chip), funded by the Brain Tumour Research and Support across Yorkshire (BTRS), £79,987.75, 2020-2023. Link to BTRS: www.btrs.org.uk
Postgraduate supervision
Pedro proudly supervises students interested in biochemistry and post-translational modifications, in a variety of systems from cardiovascular to climate change models.
Current PG students include:
- Sabrina Samuel (3rd year PhD student), who is interested in brain disease
- Alistair Marsden (2nd year PhD student), who is interested in cardiovascular disease
- Lauric Feugere (2nd year PhD student, second supervisor), who is interested in stress signalling in fish in the context of climate change
- Srihari Deepak (MD student, second supervisor), who is a neurosurgeon at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Past supervision: Dr Donatus Onwuli (graduated 2018)
CURRENT OPPORTUNITY:
We’re looking to recruit one PhD student to join our Brain Tumour Research Group.
Brain tumour biopsies maintained on-chip provide a platform that can enable fundamental investigations of novel diagnostic and clinically relevant treatment strategies, based on novel drugs and directed at individual tumours. The overarching aim of this project is to assess the effect of treating brain tumour biopsies, maintained in a novel microfluidic device, with established and new therapies and to investigate the mechanisms underlying that effect.
You will use aseptic techniques, including cell culture and microfluidics, to maintain brain tumour biopsies and you will analyse the effect of drugs on biopsies using a range of techniques such as immunohistochemistry, western blotting, and other biochemistry and molecular biology analysis.
This is a collaboration between the University of Hull and the University of Leeds, funded by Brain Tumour Research and Support across Yorkshire (BTRS). You will be based at the University of Hull under the primary supervision of Dr Pedro Beltran-Alvarez and you will have joint second supervisors in Dr Mark Wade (University of Hull) and Dr Lucy Stead (University of Leeds).
https://www.hull.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/phd/funded/biomedical-sciences-phd