Title: Postdoctoral Fellow / Senior Postdoctoral Fellow
Department: Department of Anatomy and Regenerative Medicine
Tenure: Up to 2 years specified purpose contract (with the potential to extend)
Location: Hodgkinson Lab, Tissue Engineering Research Group, 123 St Stephen's Green, Dublin
Reporting to: Dr Tom Hodgkinson
Salary: Aligned with IUA research salary scale, up to a maximum starting salary of PD2 Point 1 (€51,677 per annum) depending on experience depending on experience
Proposed Start Date: August 2024
Summary of Post
We are seeking to recruit a postdoctoral/ senior postdoctoral researcher to join the Hodgkinson Lab in the Tissue Engineering Research Group at RCSI. The successful applicant will work primarily on a HRB funded project entitled “Development of a gene activated construct targeting proinflammatory signalling to promote zonal regeneration of osteoarthritic cartilage”
Project Brief: Current treatments fail to effectively repair cartilage and typically only delay the injury associated degeneration that leads to post- traumatic osteoarthritis (PT-OA). In cartilage degeneration, loss of tissue functionality drives local inflammation, which reduces cell anabolic activity and promotes adoption of pathological catabolic and senescent cell phenotypes. This inflammatory signalling, which drastically limits the effectiveness of current cartilage repair strategies and OA treatments, is also a major cause of loss-of-function and pain. This project aims to develop a solution that reduces joint inflammation during healing, restores tissue functionality by promoting anabolic processes and prevents OA progression.
In this project, we will investigate the development of responsive expression vectors designed to attenuate damaging inflammatory signalling and promote cartilage regeneration. As part of the multidisciplinary project team, you will combine principles from synthetic biology and genome/ vector engineering to create closed-loop therapeutic gene expression vectors that respond to inflammation in pre-programmed ways. These will be integrated with instructive cartilage zone-mimicking biomaterials, fabricated through cutting-edge 3D printing and electro-writing techniques to create regenerative gene delivery platforms. By combining concepts from gene delivery, synthetic biology, biomaterials and mechanobiology, this research ultimately aims to develop functionalised biomaterials that provide patient-specific therapeutic production and significantly enhance cartilage repair.