Research PhD bursaries 2025: Immune cell interactions in alopecia areata Because of an extraordinary legacy donation for research on alopecia areata (AA), Alopecia UK has been able to provide funding for important research projects in recent years. In 2022, we awarded our first ever PhD bursary to a 3-year project investigating if early treatment can improve outcomes in people with recent-onset AA. This project started in 2023 and is now recruiting participants. In 2025, we are excited to announce we have awarded a further two PhD bursaries to projects addressing key priorities of people affected by AA. Set to start in October 2025, one of these is a project led by Professor Simon Milling and PhD student Rona McNairn. They have been awarded £107,873 over a 3-year period to investigate immune cell interactions in the skin of people with AA. The full title of the project is: 'Identifying the cellular interactions of immune cells that cause alopecia areata'. We know that alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease in which hair follicles are mistakenly attacked by our own immune cells. Using innovative techniques, they will study how different types of cells communicate with each other and how this causes hair loss. The immune system is made up of many different types of immune cells which can send messages to each other to coordinate action. JAK inhibitors interfere with this communication, preventing immune cells from interacting with each other and with non-immune cells. The success of JAK inhibitors in treating AA shows that targeting immune cell interactions is a promising approach for treatments. However, JAK inhibitors can also interfere with cell interactions not related to hair, like those that protect against infection. The side-effects from using these treatments raise questions around their long-term use. This highlights a need for new treatments, targeting AA immune interactions more directly. Using state-of-the-art techniques, they will compare skin from people with and without AA to find which cells are causing trouble. Firstly, ‘single cell sequencing‘ will allow them to analyse individual cells to see what parts of the cell are behaving differently. Combining this with ‘spatial transcriptomics’ and ‘immunohistochemical staining’ will allow them to map out where these cells are located in the skin, and how they are interacting with each other. By comparing data from affected and unaffected hair follicles they hope to find what factors are responsible for causing hair loss, and importantly, how this can be prevented. In addition to this, they will search for links between the blood and the skin. Prof Simon Milling "By the end of this project, we hope to have identified multiple molecules that are important for immune cell activity in AA. We hope these molecules will provide new directions for the development of new, more suitable treatments for AA. Additionally, through our work on blood, we hope to identify potential clinical tests which could indicate the effectiveness of different immune targeting treatments and/or the likely extent and progression of hair loss for each individual affected by AA." In developing their application to Alopecia UK, Simon and Rona spoke to people living with alopecia areata, which underlined the importance of this research for improving understanding of AA. They also discussed their plan for involving people affected by AA throughout the project. The team will meet regularly with ‘patient partners’ to go over progress on the project and work together to make sure the results are shared in a way that is accessible to the AUK community. Rona has been working on other immunology projects in Simon's lab, and we caught up with her to get her thoughts on this project. PhD student Rona McNairn What interests you about studying immmunology? “The immune system is made up of lots of different cell types, and these are interacting with each other and other cells to do so many different important jobs within the body. While the role we most often think about in terms of immune cells is keeping us safe from infections, they are also involved in other activities, such as supporting normal organ function and protecting us from cancer. I think it is really fascinating how diverse the actions of immune cells can be and I am really interested in working to understand how these different cells and their interactions can get mixed up and move away from their usual protective roles to drive autoimmune conditions like alopecia areata." And what do you hope the project will achieve for people with AA? "I think this is a really exciting project that will be using some of the most advanced research techniques currently available to look at the immune system’s contribution to alopecia areata in a new depth. We are very lucky to have the Glasgow Alopecia Areata Research Tissue Biobank to support this project. These tissue samples kindly donated by people with alopecia areata will allow us to look at immune cell activity in lots of different skin samples, meaning we can build a clear picture of how these cells are involved in hair loss. I hope that this project will provide us insight into vital immune cell interactions within alopecia-affected skin, which can be used to inform future clinical developments for people with AA to offer them safer and more effective treatment options.” We look forward to seeing the project start in October 2025. In addition to using stored samples from the Glasgow Alopecia Areata Research Tissue Bank (GAARTB), the research team continues to collect new samples from people with alopecia areata. The Biobank was first funded in 2018 by Autoimmune Alopecia Research UK (AAR-UK) before their merger with Alopecia UK. If you would like to donate samples for research, please visit the Biobank webpage here. This project was one of two PhD bursaries funded by Alopecia UK in 2025. Please see the announcement of the other project here. Manage Cookie Preferences