Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences awarded Philomathia Research Fellowship

Dr Kathy Liddell and the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences (LML) successfully bid to host a Philomathia Research Fellow from 2015-18. The Research Fellow will develop a flagship research project titled Realising Genomic Medicine: Intellectual Property Issues. The project builds on the Faculty's interest and expertise in intellectual property and life sciences within LML and CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

The core team is joined by several STEM collaborators including the PHG Foundation (an associate of Cambridge University Health Partners), the Clinical School's Department of Medical Genetics and the University's Centre for Science and Policy.

The overall aim of the project is to harness legal expertise in the field of intellectual property to help scientists and clinicians with the challenge of improving the translation of basic genomic knowledge into affordable new treatments. For example, considerable R&D is required to translate rudimentary, but significant, knowledge that a genetic variant correlates with a disease phenotype, into more precise knowledge of the variant’s relationship with disease, and how this information can be harnessed as a reliable diagnostic or preventative tool for specific individuals.

For more information on the Fellowship and the applications process: see http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/press/job-opportunities/2015/03/philomathia-research-associate-in-law-fixed-term/3019

Applications close 1 May 2015.

The fellowship is generously funded by the Philomathia Foundation as part of its research programme exploring human values and distributive justice.

The Law Faculty has recently established the Cambridge Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences (LML) to foster legal research and teaching on issues raised by medicine and life sciences. LML aims to complement the world-class biomedical research carried out by the University of Cambridge, engaging legal expertise to help promote responsible and effective medical research and healthcare. A major focus of LML is to investigate the importance of intellectual property rights in medical innovation, and propose related policy improvements.