Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Leukaemia and Tumour Immunology

Radcliffe Department of Medicine, MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford
This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated and ambitious Postdoctoral Researcher to join a research team led by Professor Paresh Vyas and to contribute to a leukaemia and tumour immunology project to discover mechanisms of alloimmune responses and developing novel anti-cancer immunotherapeutics.
Allogeneic stem cell transplantation is the most established curative form of immunotherapy in humans. The alloimmune response is poorly characterised with major unanswered questions including identifying mechanisms of tumour specific alloimmunity, the structural basis of alloimmunity and using these discoveries to engineer novel T cell directed immunotherapeutics.
You will use patient samples to identify the repertoire of alloimmune targets and T cell responses against AML that could also be used against common solid tumours. The programme includes target identification, discovery of T cell receptors that bind AML and solid tumours, defining the HLA-restriction of the presented peptide targets, dissecting mechanisms of tumour cell killing and solving the structural basis of alloimmune responses.

You will hold a relevant PhD/DPhil (or be close to completion: thesis submitted) together with relevant laboratory and computational experience. You will have experience of making and purifying soluble proteins and possess high level specialist knowledge in leukaemia and cancer biology. Experience with refining crystal structures and measuring TCR binding using SPR/Biacore are desirable.