ACF Obstetrics & Gynaecology Information

University of Manchester

  

Overview

At the University of Manchester we offer academic clinical training in Obstetrics and Gynaecological Oncology. Both of these departments are co-located at St. Mary’s Hospital which is one of the largest Women’s hospitals in Europe and has world class facilities for clinical and laboratory based research. Fellows are attached to the North Western Deanery Specialty Training scheme, which has an excellent relationship with the academic departments at the University of Manchester.

Academic Clinical Fellows will typically be allocated to a non-clinical and clinical principal investigator for the duration of their fellowship, as we believe this gives prospective clinician scientists the best introduction to specialist academic clinical training.

We have an excellent record in training new clinical academics following completion of ACF and have been able to offer 6 clinical PhD fellowships in the last year. Following completion of PhD we have also been able to offer 2 NIHR ACL positions and have a strong record of progression to NIHR Clinician Scientist awards.

   

Academic Obstetric training

Academic Obstetric training can take place in fetal medicine, maternal medicine, stillbirth, reproductive medicine and placental basic science. Obstetric academic fellows are hosted within the Manchester Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre (MFHRC) The centre is a unique collaboration between the University of Manchester, Action Medical Research and Tommy's, the baby charity, but also receives significant funding from the MRC, BBSRC and BHF. The group is one of the largest obstetric research groups in Europe and is now internationally recognised as one of the most the pre-eminent centres for reproductive biology research in the world. Principal investigators include Professor Sibley, Professor John Aplin, Professor Daniel Brison, Dr. Melissa Westwood, Dr. Ian Crocker, Dr. Rebecca Jones, Dr. Jenny Myers, Dr. Alex Heazell and Dr. Ed Johnstone.

Current major projects at MFHRC

  • MAViS. NIHR funded translation study into hypertension in pregnancy control (Myers).
  • Rainbow. NIHR funded translation study into stillbirth care and prevention (Heazell).
  • Manchester placenta clinic. Tommy’s funded project investigating management of SGA infants (Johnstone).
  • Bridging the technology gap to improve implantation rates in ART. Wellbeing of Women funded project (Aplin, Westwood)
  • Non-pharmacologic therapies in chronic hypertension (Myers, Cottrell)
  • Placental inflammation and pregnancy outcomes (Jones, Heazell, Sibley)
  • Placental Biology (Johnstone, Westwood, Aplin, Myers)
  • Maternal ageing and pregnancy outcome(Jones)
  • Fetal growth in Diabetes in Pregnancy (Velocity) (Myers, Johnstone)

  

Gynaecological Oncology

With the addition of Prof Richard Edmondson to the team in Jan 2014 the Gynaecological Cancer Research Group now has active research interests in all areas of gynaecological cancer and includes projects ranging from basic science, through translational research to clinical trials. The two principal investigators based at the St Mary’s site (Prof R Edmondson and Dr E Crosbie) work in close collaboration with PIs based elsewhere in the university including the Manchester Cancer Research Institute (formerly Paterson) including Prof S Taylor,  Prof G Jayson and Prof A Renehan. This enables us to provide academic clinical fellows with a wide range of projects and access to state of the art research facilities including biostatistics and bioinformatics where required. The Gynaecological Cancer Research Group is embedded within the UK’s largest Gynae cancer centre giving unprecedented access to clinical samples and patients.

The group is well supported by research technicians and post-doctoral researchers and has an educational programme including regular lab meetings and journal clubs.

 

Current major areas of research interest:

- Endometrial Cancer (Crosbie, Renehan), including

  • Window studies in early endometrial cancer including the use of metformin
  • The effects of weight loss on the endometrium

     

- Ovarian cancer (Edmondson, Taylor, Jayson), including:

  • DNA damage repair as a predictor of response to established and novel (PARPi) treatments in high grade serous ovarian cancer
  • Antiangiogenesis in ovarian cancer
  • Prediction of surgical outcomes in ovarian cancer
  • Tumour infiltrating lymphocyte therapy in ovarian cancer
   

   

Academic Leads: Dr. Edward Johnstone (Obstetrics) and Professor Richard Edmondson (Gynaecology)

Head of the School of Obstetrics & Gynaecology: Dr Fiona Clarke

Recruitment Helpdesk: Helpdesk.Recruitment@pat.nhs.uk or 0161 604 5553

  

Applicants wishing to find out more about the relevant clinical training programme(s), should go to the Specialties Schools page and click on the link(s) for the relevant clinical training programme(s).

 

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Last updated: 07/11/2016