英国癌症研究所基因功能组博士后职位

英国癌症研究所基因功能组博士后职位

Institute of Cancer Research

Post-doctoral Training Fellow, Gene Function team

Post-doctoral Training Fellow, Gene Function team

Closing Date

27/06/2021, 23:55

Location

London

Division Breast Cancer Research

Team Gene Function

Vacancy Type Full time

Type of Contract Fixed Term

Length of Contract 2 years

Hours per Week 35

Salary Range £32,844 to £41,718 (£32,844 for thesis submitted, awaiting PhD award)

The Institute of Cancer Research, London, is one of the world’s most influential cancer research institutes, with an outstanding record of achievement dating back more than 100 years. We provided the first convincing evidence that DNA damage is the basic cause of cancer, laying the foundation for the now universally accepted idea that cancer is a genetic disease. Today, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) leads the world at isolating cancer-related genes and discovering new targeted drugs for personalised cancer treatment.

Under the leadership of our Chief Executive, Professor Paul Workman FRS, the ICR is ranked as the UK’s leading academic research centre. Together with our partner The Royal Marsden, we are rated in the top five cancer centres globally.

The ICR is committed to attracting, developing and retaining the best minds in the world to join us in our mission – to make the discoveries that defeat cancer.

Vacancy Description

The Gene Function Laboratory focuses upon identifying and understanding tumour specific dependencies, such as synthetic lethal effects, as a means to design novel approaches to treating cancer. We have made major advances in identifying synthetic lethal interactions involving, for example, PARP inhibitors (Farmer et al Nature (2005), Edwards et al Nature (2008), Bajrami et al, Cancer Research (2014), ATR inhibitors (Williamson et al, Nature Communications (2016)) and ROS1 inhibitors (Bajrami et al, Cancer Discovery (2018)). We aim to generate pre-clinical information that can inform the design of clinical trials and the identification of novel targets for drug discovery programmes.

We are seeking a creative and motivated Postdoctoral Training Fellow to study the emergence, prevention and treatment of PARP inhibitor resistance in breast and ovarian cancer. PARP inhibitor resistance can emerge via a number of routes, but the most well-described clinical mechanism is via reversion mutations that restore the function of BRCA1/2 (Pettitt et al., Cancer Discovery 2020; reversions.icr.ac.uk). The successful candidate will study whether new protein sequence that arises in these mutations could potentially be targeted using immunotherapy and/or vaccination approaches. This will make use of human and mouse T-cell priming assays, novel mouse models available in the group, clinical samples from breast and ovarian cancer patients with reversion mutations and mass-spectrometry based approaches. This will be an interdisciplinary project carried out between the Gene Function laboratory (PI Prof. Chris Lord), The Breast Cancer Now Research Unit at King’s College London (PI Prof. Andrew Tutt) and Translational Immunotherapy (PI Prof. Alan Melcher). This is an exciting opportunity for candidates to develop expertise in new areas and work on a project with high clinical relevance. Experience with immunology, mouse genetics or DNA repair biology would be an advantage, but there are opportunities to learn in all of these areas.

This position is offered on a fixed term 2 year contract. Starting salary is in the range of £32,844* to £41,718 per annum inclusive based on previous postdoctoral experience.

*thesis submitted, awaiting PhD award

We consider all applications on merit and have a strong commitment to enhancing the diversity of our staff.

The ICR is the leading academic research centre in the UK. Effective industry collaboration and innovation in new medicines and technologies are at the heart of our approach to drive benefits for patients. The ICR is ranked:

•first for the quality and impact of our research*

•second worldwide for the number of our publications cited in patents**

•fourth worldwide for the citation rate of scientific research published across all fields**

•fourth worldwide for top-cited research publications**

•in the top five higher education institutions worldwide for academic influence and commercial impact**