PhD fellowship vacancy in pediatric oncology

PhD fellowship vacancy in pediatric oncology

"Therapy response monitoring in pediatric cancer basket trial patients"

The position:

The cancer research team at the Center for Medical Genetics (cmgg.be) (supervised by prof. dr. ir. Jo Vandesompele, prof. dr. Tom Van Maerken, dr. Bram De Wilde) has an open PhD position in the domain of translational pediatric cancer research.

The project:

While global survival of children with cancer is reaching up to 80%, cure rates remain disappointingly low for certain high-risk types of tumors and for most relapsed cases. Novel treatment approaches are urgently needed to further improve survival but also to reduce long term side effects. Translating novel, targeted therapies from the lab to the clinic remains challenging; often promising pre-clinical data cannot be translated in therapeutic improvements for the children with cancer. In this project, you will use the power of modern genomics techniques (RNA sequencing) to facilitate this translation. By discovering tumor response expression signatures in both in vitro (cell lines) and in vivo tumor model systems (murine xenografts) we hope to find biomarkers of therapy response in children treated with targeted therapies.

Your profile:

You are a highly motivated, critical and curious researcher with a keen interest in translational cancer research, willing to work in an international and multi-disciplinary research context. What you might lack in experience you make up for in eagerness to learn and introduce new techniques.

You have a master degree in a biomedical field, such as biotechnology, biochemistry, bio-engineering, biomedical sciences, pharmaceutical sciences or medicine.
You have wet lab experience and/or are willing to learn cancer research techniques such as cell line culturing and animal xenografting.
Experience with the analysis of sequencing data, and more specifically RNA sequencing data, is a plus but not a prerequisite as you will be working in a team with highly skilled data analysts that can help you find your way in this data type.
You are a team player with analytical problem-solving skills (creative, critical, and open-minded).
You are willing to strive for personal research funding.
Interested and willing to do research communication in the form of publication and active participation to research conferences.
Interested in obtaining a PhD degree.
Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
Willing to travel abroad for scientific training or collaboration.

What we offer:

A 4-year full-time research position, with the goal of obtaining a PhD degree
A fully funded research project
A truly translational research project, starting at the bench but ending with prospectively collected patient samples
Participation in an exciting and rapidly evolving research area of clinically translational genomics
Collaborate with both wet and dry lab scientists in the design, analysis and interpretation of cancer functional genomics data
Research team operating at international level and dedicated to improving survival of cancer patients
State-of-the-art lab technology and facilities
International collaboration with top-research teams with a broad range of expertises
Ghent University is a top-100 ranked university according to various ranking lists (http://www.ugent.be/en/ghentuniv/presentation/rankings.htm)
Ghent is ranked amongst the top cities to visit, with connections to London, Amsterdam, Paris in no time (https://visit.gent.be/en) . A diverse local community with a range of housing options and many opportunities for eating out, movies, sports, etc.

Location:

Center for Medical Genetics Ghent (CMGG)
Medical Research Building 1
campus UZ Gent
Corneel Heymanslaan 10
B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
tel +32 9 332 24 51

Candidates can apply by sending their CV and letter of motivation to annelies2.depaepe@ugent.be before July 6th, 2018. Top-ranked candidates will be invited for an interview (either on site or via Skype). Start date is between Sept 1 and Oct 1, 2018.

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