Immunobiology

Project: Metabolic plasticity instructs immune cell function

Dr. David Sancho (Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares, CNIC, Madrid) is looking for enthusiastic and highly motivated candidates to perform and end of master thesis (TFM) in his Immunobiology group in a cutting edge project to explore how mitochondrial metabolism drives T cell, dendritic cell and macrophage function. This can offer new targets to treat immune-mediated diseases including infection, cancer, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases. The student will learn many techniques working in vitro (cell culture, biochemistry, cell metabolic assays, flow cytometry and Immunology techniques) and will learn about the in vivo models that we are developing in the lab to address this problem.

We focus our research in dendritic cells and macrophages, the immune cell types that initiate immunity and inflammation, with a particular interest in the emerging field of immunometabolism. We use a combination of approaches at the cellular, biochemical and in vivo level (animal models of infection and cancer) and we are seeking for a profile with a strong background in bioinformatics to be able to manage data from our ongoing transcriptomic studies (bulk and single cell RNA-Seq), proteomic studies and metabolomics. Detailed information of the group can be found here: https://www.cnic.es/en/investigacion/immunobiology

The work will be co-directed by Dr. Gillian Dunphy.

Requirements:

• Strong background in Immunology and metabolism.
• An academic record with grade >8.5 is convenient.
• English level equivalent to FCE, advanced, IELTS>6.5, TOEFL>83
• Previous experience in similar projects will be valued

Qualified applicants should submit by email a cover letter, CV and English level certificate to David Sancho (dsancho@cnic.es), indicating “Immunometabolism TFM” in the email subject.

Some recent references of our work:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-019-0210-z

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.00775/full

https://jitc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40425-019-0565-5

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30709742

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124718315638?via%3Dihub

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/351

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124718311240?via%3Dihub

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28714465

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761316303818?via%3Dihub

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761316303430?via%3Dihub

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27348412

https://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/6/1/71