Title: Postdoctoral Researcher (Preclinical Tumour Biologist and Imaging specialist)
Salary: Aligned with IUA Research salary scale, up to a maximum starting salary of PD1 Point 5 (€47,854 per annum) depending on experience.
Department: Physiology and Medical Physics
Tenure: Specified purpose contract for 18 months
Location: RCSI St. Stephens Green Campus, Dublin City Centre
Reporting to: Professor Annette Byrne, Head, RCSI Precision Cancer Medicine Group
Required Start Date: June 1st 2024
About Our Research
RCSI recognises that excellence in research is critical to the quality of its educational activities, its credibility, and, overall, to its mission to enhance human health. RCSI's research strategy aims to build upon its strength in translational biomedical and clinical research to deliver transformational, high impact changes in health care. Targeting both Irish national and EU funding, along with increased collaboration with industry, is a major part of the RCSI research strategy. Forging increased collaboration between RCSI PIs and industry is of critical importance to achieving success in this area. RCSI is also committed to provide its researchers with the supports and developmental opportunities to enable them to continuously grow and support their overall career development.
The RCSI Precision Cancer Medicine (PCM) Group led by Professor Annette Byrne, is located in the RCSI Department of Physiology and Medical Physics.
The PCM Group focuses on the development of novel precision medicine approaches in the oncology setting and works to elucidate novel predictive biomarkers (genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, imaging) and to identify new therapeutic targets. The overall goal is to improve patient outcomes with a particular focus on colorectal and brain malignancies. To achieve our objectives, we employ highly disruptive and innovative approaches including multi-modality molecular imaging, state-of-the-art preclinical models and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) of clinical samples, having access to oncology patient data sets.
Professor Byrne has extensive expertise in coordinating and collaborating in large European research projects funded by the European Union (www. glioresolve.eu; www. colossusproject.eu/; The EurOPDX consortium - About - EuroPDX ), as well as leading several national programmes funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), the Irish Heath Research Board (HRB) and others.
Open Position
We are seeking to recruit a post-doctoral tumour biologist (preclinical) to join the PCM Group. The successful appointee will work primarily on a SFI funded programme entitled “ Leveraging chromosomal instability for improved diagnosis and treatment in bevacizumab resistant metastatic colorectal cancer ”, where their main role will be to lead preclinical validation imaging studies.
Project Description
The project builds on previous high impact publications (Nat Commun. 2018 Oct 5;9(1):4112 & J Clin Oncol. 2018 Jul 10;36(20):2052-2060) that have identified a new classification system (based on copy number alterations patterns) to predict patient response to chemotherapy + bevacizumab (BVZ) in RAS mutant metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients. Overall, we seek to understand why tumours displaying high CIN respond to BVZ and unravel the underlying biology that drives this response.
Job description
The successful candidate will be responsible for the preclinical imaging studies due to start on the project during 2024. Specifically, they will evaluate the impact of BVZ + standard of care chemotherapy on cancer hallmarks across CIN subtypes in preclinical models employing multi-modality imaging studies. Overall, the study will further unravel the underlying biology that drives BVZ response in this disease.
For more information on the role please see Job Description.
Application Process
Please email [email protected] with informal inquiries.
Please apply online at www. rcsi.ie/careers with your covering Letter and CV containing contact details of 2 references no later than 5pm on the closing date (2nd May 2024).
We are all too aware that imposter syndrome and the confidence gap can sometimes stop fantastic candidates putting themselves forward, so please do apply — we'd love to hear from you.