Senior Research Assistant in Biosciences

About the role

Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, you will support the Investigators in delivery of research activities for the "ISOS-Implantable Ecosystems of Genetically Modified Bacteria for the Personalized Treatment of Patients with Chronic Diseases" project. We are seeking a highly committed, motivated, and creative scientist to join the research team on this new EU funded €3M project. The project is in collaboration with a consortium consisting of universities, research institutes and companies from Spain, Germany and Greece.  The Northumbria team will deliver a engineered living system for personalised treatment of patients with chronic disease by 1) engineering model bacterial chassis to produce recombinant antibodies on demand; 2) engineering auxotrophic bacterial strains to address biosafety concerns and 3) engineering non-model ocular residential strains of bacteria to achieve similar functionalities as the model bacteria. 

About the project

In ISOS we propose to develop the first biomedical product for the in-situ fabrication and auto-renewed delivery of therapeutic compounds employing complex ecosystems of probiotic genetically engineered bacteria (GEB) integrated in a biomaterial-based bioreactor. ISOS is designed to treat chronic diseases requiring lengthy treatments. The encapsulated GEB populations produce the therapeutic molecules "on demand", stimulated by the signals of the pathological environment within the patient, i.e., inflammation and/or reactive oxygen species. Bacteria populations interact to maintain a dynamic equilibrium of GEB species and to guarantee the survival of the drug-producing GEB as long as the disease persists. The GEB ecosystem is designed in such a way that bacteria cannot survive outside of the encapsulating biomaterial, to meet future biosafety and regulatory requirements. The design and the configuration of the GEB ecosystem will be personalized for each patient, and it will be done using in-silico tools and synthetic biology. As a Proof-of-Concept, we propose to engineer an implantable GEB-based bioreactor for the treatment  of wet form age-related macular degeneration (wAMD), which is caused by an abnormal production of Vascular Endothelial Growth factor (VEGF). This Proof-of-Concept will demonstrate the ability of ISOS to replace the repeated intraocular injections of Anti-VEGF molecules (current treatment) with a single ISOS bioreactor that will enhance the therapeutic response and minimize side effects due the molecular crosstalk between ISOS and the pathological environment. ISOS will establish the principles of a new generation of therapeutic products that will use recombinant probiotic bacteria strains libraries for personalized treatments with rigorous control of local drug production and efficient delivery based of dynamic variation of pathological signals.

About the team

This research project will be delivered within the Living Construction research group in Northumbria University. Living Construction group is one of research groups in the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE, www.bbe.ac.uk), which focuses on the production of functional materials through biological fabrication processes. One key area of research is the exploration of the engineered living materials for a wide range of applications including the construction, fashion and biomedicine.

This project will be based in the HBBE labs in the Department of Applied Sciences at Northumbria University (www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/academic-departments/applied-sciences).

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