Dundee researcher awarded £1.8 million UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship

Dr Ralitsa Madsen from the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU) in the School of Life Sciences has been granted £1.8 million in funding over the next four years.

This support will enable her to explore the intricate PI3K pathway, which plays a crucial role in cellular functions and is linked to disorders such as cancer and human overgrowth syndromes.

Dr Madsen’s research aims to detail the complex circuits regulated by the PI3K pathway and understand how mutations affect cellular decision-making. The PI3K pathway is among the most commonly mutated across human cancers and is therefore the focus of a lot of pharmaceutical research.

Much like a malfunctioning musical instrument, cells with a PI3K mutation stop ‘playing the right tune’ due to the mutations. Instead of simply shutting down the system, as current therapies do, the research aims to repair it to ‘play the right tune’ once again.

Her work will involve developing a new method using stem cells to track and measure signals in different cells over time. By teaming up with national and international experts in maths and physics, Dr Madsen will create detailed maps that show how cells make decisions, both when they are healthy and when they are not due to a PI3K mutation. These maps should help to identify potential new treatments, which will be tested in the lab and in future could lead to customised treatments for individual patients. 

The fellowship also includes funding for a cutting-edge piece of equipment called a Cytometry by Time Of Flight (CyTOF) XT. This machine allows Dr Madsen to analyse multiple molecules in thousands of individual cells, quickly and accurately. It will also be available for use by other researchers in Dundee and beyond, encouraging more scientific collaboration and advancements. This will be only the second CyTOF instrument in Scotland, and the only one available for wider use. 

Dr Madsen said, "I am humbled and incredibly grateful for receiving a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. It is a career-changing event and one that will provide my research group with the time and resources required to deliver a step change in our understanding and ability to target a fundamental disease-causing circuit in human cells. 

“As the name suggests, this Fellowship also comes with leadership responsibility, one that I will honour in several ways, including by working tirelessly to champion a healthy research culture, a culture that celebrates rigour and quality over quantity, and one that instils curiosity and passion for learning in our young researchers early on in their academic journeys. 

“Finally, I would like to thank the Wellcome Trust whose generous support during my PhD and postdoc enabled this achievement, my mentors and colleagues within the MRC PPU, School of Life Sciences and beyond for their support, my collaborators without whom this Fellowship would be impossible, and last but not least, the PROS patient community whose belief in the value of our research keeps our group inspired every single day.”

Dario Alessi, Director of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, commented, " I congratulate Ralitsa for the award of this prestigious fellowship. She has worked extremely hard to achieve this, and it is richly deserved. Ralitsa is incredibly talented and laser-focused on unravelling the intricate biology of how the PI3K pathway is regulated at the single-cell level to control diverse cellular decisions and how this information can be harnessed to develop better treatments for disorders of human growth and cancer. 

“I am also extremely impressed with the pioneering mathematical, physics and computational approaches that Ralitsa is harnessing with the support of collaborators to understand how biology is controlled at the single-cell level. Her work synergises so well with much other ongoing research within the MRC PPU and beyond.” 

UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships support early career researchers and innovators with outstanding potential. Dr Madsen is one of 12 researchers to receive funding in Scotland with only 68 of the UK’s top researchers from all over the country having received a portion of the £104 million investment as part of UK Research and Innovation’s Future Leaders Fellowships. 

UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, stated, “UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with long-term support and training to develop ambitious, transformative ideas.

“The programme supports the research and innovation leaders of the future to transcend disciplinary and sector boundaries, bridging the gap between academia and business.”

The fellows announced today demonstrate how these awards continue to drive excellence and to shorten the distance from discovery to prosperity and public good.” 

This investment underscores the UK’s commitment to nurturing top-tier researchers across all disciplines, fostering advancements that resonate across society and beyond.