Research Fellow in Immunology

About us

The centre is recognised as a Cancer Research UK Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence. For more information about the UCL Cancer Institute follow the link: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/cancer

About the role

We are looking for a talented and enthusiastic Post-Doctoral fellow to join the Therapeutic vulnerabilities in solid tumors and sarcoma group of Dr Sophie Postel-Vinay, in collaboration with the Immune Regulation and Tumour Immunotherapy group from Sergio Quezada.

The applicant will have the opportunity to join a new group that is being developed in collaboration with an established dynamic team at Gustave Roussy, and collaborators at the Institut Curie, France. The exciting program is part of a new Fight Kids Cancer grant, and aims at developing and evaluating novel therapeutic approaches to target aggressive transcription factors-driven sarcomas of unmet need of the children and young adult called desmoplastic small round cell tumours (DSRCT), using neoantigen-based approaches (Vibert et al, Cell Rep 2022) and surface markers-based approaches. The team has recently launched a program dedicated to DSRCT which has so far mostly focused on molecular characterization (Hénon et al, Cell Rep Med 2024); the available data and models are the foundations of this new program, which aims at addressing the challenge of therapeutically targeting transcription factor-driven sarcomas using immune therapy based approaches.

The applicant have the opportunity to work under the supervision of the PI in close collaboration with expert immunology teams involved in the project at UCL (Prof Sergio Quezada +/- Prof Kerry Chester), Gustave Roussy and Institut Curie (France; Dr Josh Waterfall). The project will focus on functional immunology and surface markers, with the aim to ultimately develop a targeted therapeutic approach to be translated into the clinic.

Applications should include a CV and a Cover Letter: In the Cover Letter please evidence the essential and desirable criteria in the Person Specification part of the Job Description. By including a Cover Letter, you can leave blank the “Why you have applied for this role” field in the application form, which is limited in the number of characters it will allow.

This position is funded for 3 years in the first instance with the possibility of extension.

About you

Successful candidates must have a PhD (or close to completion) with relevant laboratory experience or an MSc. in Cancer Biology, Immunology or a related discipline (or close to completion) or higher degree and ability to perform molecular and cellular biology, tissue culture, flow cytometry, cloning and in vitro cell-based experiment and to undergo further training if required.

The candidate should have a solid knowledge of immunology, proteomics, molecular and cellular biology (including genome editing by CRISPR and lentival transfections, molecular cloning, flow cytometry, immune and cancer cell culture tissue culture), and TCR or antibody-based therapy. This role will also benefit those who have experience in bioinformatics (notably proteomics, immunoproteomics and single-cell analysis) and mouse work.

Appointment at Grade 7 is dependent upon having been awarded a PhD; if this is not the case, initial appointment will be at Grade 6B as Research Assistant with payment at Grade 7 being backdated to the date of final submission of the PhD Thesis.

For rewards and benefits at UCL please visit:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/reward-and-benefits.

You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/

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