Research Assistant / Research Fellow

About us

The mission of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health is to improve the health and well-being of children, and the adults they will become, through world-class research, education, and public engagement. The UCL GOS ICH, together with its clinical partner Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, forms the largest concentration of children’s health research outside North America. GOS ICH’s activities include active engagement with children and families, to ensure that our work is relevant and appropriate to their needs. GOS ICH generates the funding for our research by setting out our proposals in high quality applications to public, charitable, and industrial funding bodies and disseminates the results of our research by publication in the medical and scientific literature, to clinicians, policy makers and the wider public. The Institute offers world-class education and training across a wide range of teaching and life learning programmes which addre ss the needs of students and professional groups who are interested in and undertaking work relevant to child health.

About the role

A research assistant / fellow position is available to join Professor David Long’s kidney development and disease group. The researcher will work on a Diabetes UK funded grant using 3-dimensional organoids to establish an experimental model to understand how vascular complications arise in diabetic patients. To do this, the post-holder will replicate the diabetic environment by providing (i) vascular organoids with an external blood supply to directly deliver glucose to the endothelial vessel lining and (ii) use serum from diabetic patients with and without vascular complications to refine the milieu the vascular organoid is exposed to. Secondly, we will identify molecular changes in the transcriptome of the vascular organoid following exposure to serum obtained from diabetic patients using single-cell technologies to develop targeted therapies for diabetic vascular complications. The salary in this post is either at grade 6B (£37,332 - £39,980 per annum) or grade 7 (£42,09 9 - £43,205 per annum) and is funded for 30 months in the first instance.

About you

The post-holder will hold a BSc or equivalent in a relevant biomedical subject. Experience of undertaking research in a biomedical setting, carrying out literature searches, critical appraisal of research papers, molecular/cellular research skills (tissue culture, FACS analysis, histology) is essential. Experience in either stem/cell organoid techniques, single cell sequencing, vascular, renal, or developmental biology would be desirable.

Advert information