Post-doctoral research fellow : Heidelberg, Germany

3D culture models for precision medicine of blood cancers

Post-doctoral research fellow: Heidelberg, Germany
Job description: We are searching for a postdoc to join our highly interdisciplinary team. Our aim is to develop rational and biology-based treatment strategies for precision medicine of blood cancer. We are systematically mapping pathway dependencies of tumors in hundreds of primary cancer cell samples ex vivo using large drug libraries paired with detailed molecular characterization (WES, RNA-Seq). You will be responsible for developing culture models of three-dimensional tumor cell growth for high-throughput analysis of drug sensitivity dynamics. You will be able to take advantage of state of the art intelligent imaging technologies. Within a collaborative framework with full access to facilities of the University Hospital Heidelberg, the EMBLand the German Cancer Research Center the Postdoc will be able to develop an independent line of research and profile. 
Postdoc candidates will have a strong interest in cancer biology and an excellent background in cellular and molecular biology. Knowledge in 3D culture modeling, life cell imaging techniques and computational data analysis will be advantageous. Successful candidates will have a PhD with less than five years of postdoctoral experience and should be enthusiastic about working in an interdisciplinary team environment. 
We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers at University Hospital Heidelberg (Dr. S. Dietrich), the German Cancer research center. The Postdoc will be embedded in this unique collaboration, which is setup to integrate systematic functional assays, multi-omic profiling, bioinformatic analysis and mathematical modeling for the development towards clinical applications. 

Further reading:
1. Zenz T, Mertens D, Küppers R, Döhner H, Stilgenbauer S. From pathogenesis to treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Nat Rev Cancer. 2010 Jan;10(1):37-50.
2. Laufer C, Fischer B, Billmann M, Huber W, Boutros M. Mapping genetic interactions in human cancer cells with RNAi and multiparametric phenotyping. Nat Methods. 2013 May;10(5):427-31.
3. Dietrich S, Glimm H, Andrulis M, von Kalle C, Ho AD, Zenz T. BRAF inhibitionin refractory hairy-cell leukemia. N Engl J Med. 2012 May 24;366(21):2038-40.
4. Systematic identification of genomic markers of drug sensitivity in cancer cells. Garnett MJ, et al. Nature. 2012 Mar 28;483(7391):570-5.