The Institute of Cancer Research, 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 Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) leads the world at isolating cancer-related genes and discovering new targeted drugs for personalised cancer treatment. Under the leadership of our Chief Executive, Professor Paul Workman FRS, the ICR is ranked as the UK’s leading academic research centre. Together with our partner The Royal Marsden, we are rated in the top four cancer centres globally. 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 Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit, 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 Cancer Therapeutics Unit’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, drug metabolism and clinical specialists who focus on new molecular targets emerging from human genome and ground breaking cell biology research
A postdoctoral position is now available in the Hit Discovery and Structural Design Team within the Unit. The team combines assay development and small-molecule high-throughput screening with fragment-based hit discovery, biophysical assays and X-ray crystallography. These methodologies are underpinned by state-of-the art protein expression, purification and protein characterisation capabilities allowing the generation of large quantities of high quality recombinant proteins. The successful candidate will work on an exciting early stage target in CTU’s drug discovery portfolio. The postdoctoral training fellow will establish the successful expression, purification and characterisation of the protein target, using contemporary expression systems, including insect and mammalian cells, and purification methods available within the team. They will establish the in-house crystallisation and structure determination and subsequently carry out the structural determination of protein-inhibitor complexes. In addition, the post-holder is expected to initiate the development of biochemical and biophysical assays to characterise the protein target and to establish compound screening assays. The successful candidate will be an integral member of a multidisciplinary project team and will interact closely with the biologists, computational chemists, medicinal chemists and structural biologists and will therefore be expected to work across the two sites in Chelsea, London and Sutton, Surrey.
Applicants must have a PhD in a biological or physical science, and experience in macromolecular crystallography (to include protein biochemistry, protein crystallisation, & protein crystallography). Expertise in insect/mammalian cell expression, assay development and/or biophysical techniques would be highly advantageous.
The starting salary for this position will be up to £35,538p.a. inclusive (based on previous experience) and the post is offered on a fixed term contract of 1 year.
Informal enquiries can be made to Dr Rob van Montfort via the following email:
[email protected]. PLEASE NOTE that this email is for informal enquiries only and all applications must be made via the ICR e-recruitment system by clicking on the 'Visit Website' button below.
Further details can be found in the job description on the ICR website.
