Postdoctoral positions in cellular immunotherapy of solid tumors

Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research?

The Center for Cellular Cancer Therapy (C3T), Karolinska Institutet (KI), is a recently formed research constellation funded by a grant from the Swedish Research Council following a call for national for Centers of Research Excellence. We encompass basic, translational, and clinical principal investigators with a focus on understanding and improving cellular immunotherapies against cancer, with a particular focus on solid tumors. Our overall aim is to expand competence and create an international competitive platform at KI within the rapidly developing field of living drugs against cancer.

C3T encompasses the following research group leaders:

Carmen Gerlach: Expertise in cytotoxic lymphocyte differentiation and function, mouse models, advanced cell lineage tracing technologies

Yenan Bryceson: Expertise in cytotoxic lymphocyte differentiation and function, transcriptional regulation of lymphocyte tissue-residency

Isabelle Magalhaes: CAR-T cell immunotherapy, xenogenic models of CAR-T cells targeting solid tumors

Michael Uhlin: Gamma-delta T cell biology and immunotherapy, clinical cell manufacturing

Stephan Mielke: CAR-T cell immunotherapy, responsible for clinical CAR-T cell trials

You will be working in an international and interdisciplinary research environment, where collaborative efforts are encouraged and your development to scientific independence will be fostered. Within C3T we constitute a multi-disciplinary group of experimentalists, lab technicians, computational biologists, developers, PhD students and researchers of various background. We always aim for an open and creative environment. The research groups are based within different research constellations at Karolinska Institutet, but will foster collaboration through regular events and yearly workshops. You will have access to state-of-the art molecular biology, cell culture, animal husbandry, flow cytometry, and imaging facilities.

To build a strong and creative research team, we are looking for high achievers from universities around the world. We will offer an intellectually stimulating environment with prominent guest researchers and we look for talented people who will play a part in developing our next breakthrough ideas. Our aim is to promote independent researchers that will build their careers in science.

Your mission

Our vision is to utilize insights from cytotoxic lymphocyte biology and tissue-residency to improve cellular immunotherapy of solid tumors. Our teams have recently published high-impact publications on comparative T cell differentiation markers (Zwijnenburg et al., Immunity 2023) and mechanism of tissue-resident cytotoxic CD8+ T cell differentiation associated with tumor control (Zitti et al., Immunity 2023). We have developed CAR-T cell models of solid tumors, including ovarian cancer (Schoutrop et al., Cancer Res 2021; Schoutrop et al., JITC 2023), and identified γδ T cell subsets associated with tumor cell responses (Foord et al., Sci Trans Med 2021). Prof Mielke was responsible for first registered CAR-T cell trial in Sweden (Schuster et al., N Engl J Med 2019).

Within our C3T consortium, aims include:

1) Identifying the optimal sources for CAR T cell-targeting of ovarian cancer in xenogeneic models based on fundamental insights to cytotoxic lymphocyte differentiation

2) Gaining insights into the differentiation of tumor-targeting cytotoxic lymphocytes in order to pin-point epigenetic signatures associated with effective treatments in mouse models

3) Evaluating the potential of human T cell editing and transcriptional rewiring for improved cellular immunotherapy of solid tumors

4) Further evaluating and developing γδ T cell-based therapies with expedited clinical translation

In your application, we kindly ask you to motivate which project you would be most interested to work in.

We aim to recruit an independent and motivated person who can set up and maintain workflows by implementing or adapting existing tools. Methods will include cell culture, genetic manipulation, advanced flow cytometry and sorting, (single-cell) RNA-seq, functional analyses, and animal experiments. Your efforts aim to identify and experimentally validate new approaches for imporoved cellular therapy of advanced solid cancers.

Your profile

To be eligible for employment as a postdoctor a doctoral degree or a foreign degree deemed to be equivalent to a doctoral degree is required. This eligibility requirement must be fulfilled at the latest at the time of the employment decision. It is considered as an advantage if you have completed your doctoral degree within the last three years, if there are special reasons, your degree may have been completed earlier.

The applicant must have a strong scientific background with relevant expertise, e.g. in molecular biology, cell culture, modification, and differentiation as well as advanced analyses methods. Interests in programming, computational biology, and statistics as well as experience in high-throughput sequence and gene expression data analysis is considered a merit.

Required skills:

At least one first author publications in recognized peer-reviewed journal
Good knowledge of immunology and immunotherapy of cancer
Extensive experience with methods relevant to cellular immunotherapy of cancer
Excellent communication skills and motivation to work collaboratively
Ability to work independently and manage multiple projects in parallel
Proficiency in spoken and written English

Desirable skills:

Experimental knowledge of immunological methods
Hands-on experience with cell culture, cell sorting, and advanced flow cytometry
Hands on experience with animal models of cancer
Experience with viral vector for cell transduction
Experience CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing
Knowledge in R and foundations of statistics
Knowledge in Linux environment and at least one programming language, such as Java
Familiarity with tools for workflows and software development such as GitHub

What do we offer?

A creative and inspiring environment with wide-ranging expertise and interests. Karolinska Institutet is one of the world's leading medical universities. At Karolinska Institutet, we conduct successful medical research and hold the largest range of medical education in Sweden. At KI, you get to meet researchers working with a wide range of specialisms and methods, giving you ample opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with the various scientific fields within medicine and health. It is the crossover collaborations, which have pushed KI to where it is today, at the forefront of global research. Several of the people you meet in healthcare are educated at KI. A close relationship with the health care providers is important for creating groundbreaking top quality education and research. Karolinska Institutet is also a state university, which entitles you to several benefits through our collective agreement.

Location: Flemingsberg/ Solna

The Center for Cellular Cancer Therapy (C3T)

Application

An employment application must contain the following documents in English or Swedish:

A complete resumé, including date of the thesis defence, title of the thesis, previous academic positions, academic title, current position, academic distinctions, and committee work
A complete list of publications
A summary of current work (no more than one page)

Welcome to apply at the latest 2024-02-11.

The application is to be submitted through the Varbi recruitment system.

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