Postdoctoral position protein crystallography and higher scientific officer assay development p … Full Time

Instruct-ERIC
Overview

Jobs in Structural Biology and Related Fields. Postdoctoral position protein crystallography and higher scientific officer assay development positions available at The Institute of Cancer Research, London UK.

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, is one of the world’s most influential cancer research institutes, with an outstanding record of achievement dating back more than 100 years. We provided the first convincing evidence that DNA damage is the basic cause of cancer, laying the foundation for the now universally accepted idea that cancer is a genetic disease. Today, The ICR leads the world at isolating cancer-related genes and discovering new targeted drugs for personalised cancer treatment. Together with our hospital partner The Royal Marsden, we are rated in the top four centres for cancer research and treatment worldwide. As well as being a world-class institute, we are a college of the University of London. We came top in the league table of university research quality compiled from the Research Excellence Framework and second in 2021 (REF 2014 and 2021). The ICR is committed to attracting, developing and retaining the best minds in the world to join us in our mission – to make the discoveries that defeat cancer.

The Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery (CCDD), within the Division of Cancer Therapeutics, is a multidisciplinary bench-to-bedside centre, comprising around 160 staff dedicated to the discovery and development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. The CCDD’s exciting goal is to discover high quality small molecule drug candidates and to progress these to clinical trial. All the scientific disciplines are in place to make this possible, including medicinal chemistry, biology, structural biology, assay scientists, drug metabolism and clinical specialists. This is an exciting and fast-moving research setup and offers the opportunity to work within a multi-disciplinary environment using state-of-the-art techniques and equipment.

Two positions are available in Dr Rob van Montfort’s Hit Discovery and Structural Design (HDSD) group within the CCDD. The team uses biochemical and biophysical assays to perform small-molecule high-throughput screening and fragment-based hit discovery, coupled with X-ray crystallography to enable structure-based drug design. These methodologies are underpinned by state-of-the art protein expression, purification and biophysical characterisation capabilities, allowing for the generation of large quantities of high-quality protein targets.

Responsibilities

• Postdoctoral training fellow in protein crystallography involved in the structure determination of protein-ligand complexes, primarily by X-ray crystallography and potentially by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM).
• Produce and purify proteins, crystallise proteins, determine structures by X-ray crystallography and perform subsequent structural analysis.
• Be an integral member of a multidisciplinary project team within the CCDD at the ICR Sutton site and work closely with biologists, computational chemists, medicinal chemists, assay scientists and structural biologists.
• Access state-of-the-art facilities for protein production and purification, biophysical characterisation and crystallisation at the Sutton site; participate in the Division of Structural Biology facilities at Chelsea with access to cryo-EM facilities, including Glacios and Titan Krios with Falcon III detectors.

Qualifications

• PhD (or equivalent) in a biological or physical science with demonstrable experience in X-ray crystallography and protein biochemistry.
• Experience in cryo-EM specimen preparation and data processing is advantageous but not mandatory.
• Experience in molecular biology, protein expression and purification, and biophysical characterisation of protein samples is highly desirable.

Additional requirements

• Experience in assay development and screening is sought for a higher scientific officer level position.
• The role includes developing and running plate-based biochemical and/or cellular screening assays to support identification and characterisation of small-molecule inhibitors against novel cancer targets using various detection technologies.
• Strong laboratory experience monitoring small molecule binding and function in drug discovery is required; a good understanding of enzymology is beneficial, as is prior use of automation equipment for liquid handling and compound profiling.

Contract and contact

The posts are offered on a fixed-term contract for 18 months initially.

Informal enquiries to or .

Please do not send your application to Dr van Montfort, Dr Le Bihan, or Dr Caroline Ewens; apply via the e-recruitment system on our website .