Research Fellow / Senior Research Fellow

Job title:

Research Fellow / Senior Research Fellow

Company:

University College London

Job description

About usWe are seeking a collaborative and self-motivated wet-lab scientist to work on an exciting cancer immunology project, as part of the ground breaking Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED) initiative launched by Cancer Research UK. ACED brings together five centres of excellence in cancer early detection: UCL, Stanford, Cambridge, Manchester and CEDAR at OHSU with new partner institutes across the US and Europe expected through 2024. The successful applicant will join an ambitious new international consortium of investigators formed under ACED’s flagship ‘Big Idea’ project of ‘Exploiting the Adaptive Immune System for Cancer Early Detection’. The candidate will conduct experiments that aim to identify tumour antigen-specific T cells from healthy, pre-cancer screening and early-stage cancer cohorts across six tumour types, via cutting-edge in vitro platforms. In the first aim the postholder will identify and validate tumour reactive T cells through scRNAseq, T cell receptor (TCR) sequencing, cloning and peptide screening. The data will be utilised to decipher the temporal clonal dynamics of tumour-reactive TCRs during carcinogenesis in individuals with pre-malignant lesions, and those with defined risk (associated with carcinogen exposure, age or genetic predisposition) to assess the utility of cancer specific TCRs or meta-clones for early detection. This data will feed into efforts to train and/ or tune machine learning models developed in Professor Benny Chain (UCL), Dr Jamie Blundell’s (Cambridge Early Cancer Institute) laboratories to learn the cancer antigen-TCR map. The postholder will be encouraged to innovate around the technology applied and the experimental design and will have flexibility to develop and learn new technologies in the consortium and collaborate with neighbouring laboratories at the UCL Cancer Institute.About the roleThe position will be based within a multi-disciplinary team of T cell Immunologists, bioinformaticians, other wet-lab scientists and translational research clinicians concerned with both basic immunological principles and understanding the early immune response to cancer. The applicant will be supervised by Dr James Reading, who is group leader of the Pre-Cancer Immunology group at UCL, theme lead of Immunology in the CRUK Lung cancer centre of excellence and will be the senior laboratory scientist leading two ACED consortium work packages. They will also closely collaborate with the labs of Prof Sam Janes, Prof Sergio Quezada, Prof Benny Chain, Dr Jamie Blundell and Dr Evan Lind (OSHU). The post is funded for 1 year in the first instance, with expectation of an additional 2 years. The start date is June-Aug 2024. The starting salary is contingent on the candidate’s previous experience. This project will build on a strong track record of significant discoveries in the field of tumour immunology at UCL Cancer Institute, and the candidate will benefit from expert training in an exciting and dynamic environment.

About youThe successful applicant will have a proven track record and strong skills in immunology. Prior experience with in vitro immune cell culture, TCRs and scRNAseq is particularly desired.What we offerAs well as the exciting opportunities this role presents we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday (including 27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insurance

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and InclusionAs London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce.These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here :Available documents

Expected salary

Location

North West London

Job date

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 22:11:17 GMT

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