Supervisor View Full Details

Supervisor View 2
October 3, 2016
Supervisor View Full Details 2nd
October 12, 2016

Prof Peter Maxwell

Department:School of Medicine

Division:Centre for Public Health

Organisation:Queen's University Belfast

Webpage:http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/CentreforPublicHealth/

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Research Fields
  • genetics, genomics and molecular biology
  • epidemiology/population health research
Postgrad Medical Specialites
  • Medicine
Medical Subspecialties
  • Nephrology
My Work

Peter Maxwell is Professor of Renal Medicine at Queen?s University Belfast. Prof Maxwell leads the Nephrology Research Group at Queen?s within the Centre for Public Health. The nephrology research team includes senior academic staff, Dr Amy Jayne McKnight and Dr Gareth McKay.

Prof Maxwell has been successful in establishing several DNA collections that have facilitated large-scale, collaborative projects to identify inherited risk factors associated with kidney disease, founding the Genetics of Nephropathy and International Effort (GENIE) collaboration with colleagues in the UK, Ireland, Finland and the USA. This consortium, working on genetic landscape of diabetic nephropathy in type 1 diabetes, has been recently funded for a further five years by NIDDK.

Prof Maxwell is also a clinical co-PI (with PI Prof Tim O?Brien, NUI Galway) in a European Union Horizon 2020 programme grant (NEPHSTROM) exploring mesenchymal stem cell treatment of human diabetic kidney disease. He also has a successful long term collaboration related to diabetic kidney disease with Prof Catherine Godson (Conway Institute UCD) and is co-PI on an SFI-DEL programme grant exploring biomarkers for chronic kidney disease progression.

Prof Maxwell has supervised > 40 postgraduate research students to completion of higher degrees. http://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/peter-maxwell(70529ee3-6a55-4727-b2aa-4c0b40934694).html

Potential Projects

Various PhD projects are available within the Nephrology Research Group at Queen?s University in conjunction with clinical training in all aspects of renal medicine at the Regional Nephrology Unit, Belfast City Hospital. Potential applicants are warmly invited to discuss their individual research interests directly with Prof Maxwell and other nephrology research group supervisor(s).

Areas of interest

1. Genetic architecture of chronic kidney disease with particular focus on diabetic nephropathy: laboratory-based projects are available exploring genomic, epigenetic and transcriptomic risk factors for kidney disease. An active and well-funded renal research laboratory is situated in the Belfast City Hospital adjacent to the main University campus. Training would be provided in state-of-the-art molecular genetic methods and bioinformatics analyses to equip the research fellow to tackle genetic susceptibility to common complex diseases.
Am J Physiol Renal Physiol. 2014 Oct 1;307(7):F757-76. doi: 10.1152/ajprenal.00306.2014
Diabetes. 2015 Dec;64(12):4238-46. doi: 10.2337/db15-0254
Diabet Med. 2015 Aug;32(8):1104-9. doi: 10.1111/dme.12763

2. Retinal image parameters as predictors of chronic disease outcomes ? several prospective and cross-sectional studies (including UK Biobank) are being employed to test associations between retinal blood vessel parameters (measured using sophisticated image analysis software) and prediction of clinical outcomes in renal disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer?s disease.
PLoS One. 2015 Sep 1;10(9):e0136434. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0136434
Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2014 Dec 18;56(1):382-7. doi: 10.1167/iovs.14-15523.

3. Renal transplant clinical outcomes and genomics ? Northern Ireland has a single transplant centre with excellent prospective follow up of recipients. The clinical database and matched DNA samples have research ethics approval for combined clinical and genetic studies (some of which have been in collaboration with the RoI national transplant centre, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin). Multiple successful projects have been completed for higher degrees.
Nephrol Dial Transplant. 2015 Aug;30(8):1403-11. doi: 10.1093/ndt/gfv214
Transplantation. 2014 Sep 27;98(6):646-52. doi: 10.1097/TP.0000000000000115
J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014 May;25(5):1037-49. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2013040383.