Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Cancer Genetic Epidemiology
The Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology (CCGE) is recruiting a motivated and ambitious PhD candidate skilled in genetic epidemiology, biostatistics, mathematics computational biology or related discipline to contribute to the "Hereditary & Early onset breast cancer: Comprehensive personalised Assessment, early Risk Evaluation and clinical management" (HER-CARE) project.
The successful applicant will work on the project "Assessing the role of rare germline non-coding genetic variation in breast cancer susceptibility using whole genome sequencing data". This project will investigate the contribution of rare non coding regulatory variants, including those in enhancers, promoters, UTRs, and transcription factor binding sites to breast cancer susceptibility. Using whole genome sequencing data from the UK Biobank, the 100,000 Genomes Project and other datasets, the student will apply rare variant burden tests, regulatory element annotations, and integrative functional genomics to identify and validate novel associations. The project will also quantify the contribution of these variants to unexplained breast cancer heritability and assess age specific effects to support improved risk prediction across the lifespan.