2024 BNA Scholars announced
15th March 2024
Dementia is the biggest health challenge of our century.
The UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) is the biggest UK initiative supporting research to fill this gap.
Research from UK DRI at The University of Cambridge focuses on the mechanistic processes involved in the earliest stages of neurodegenerative disease to identify therapeutic targets with the greatest potential to prevent dementia.
These processes include the spreading of misfolded tau protein, the cold shock protein response in the repair of synapses and autophagy as a protective cellular response, all of which are relevant to several different types of dementia.
Applications are invited for a postdoctoral Research Associate to join the team of Dr Gabriel Balmus in the newly established UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) centre at the University of Cambridge for a new project to explore the role of DNA Damage in Huntington's Disease.
Funded by CHDI Foundation, this project will be a collaboration between the Balmus Laboratory in the UK DRI at Cambridge and Professor Sarah Tabrizi's Laboratory in the UK DRI at UCL.
Huntington's Disease (HD) is a fatal autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease caused by unstable expansion of a CAG triple nucleotide repeat in the coding region of the HTT gene. Currently there is no treatment that can slow or stop disease initiation or progression, thus there is an unmet need for research aimed at discovering disease modifiers prospective to become used in therapy.
Large HD population studies have recently uncovered that the expansion of repeats is strongly modified by a set of factors involved in repairing DNA damage, thus critical for genome maintenance.
The current position is aimed at exploring using CRISPR/Cas9 across the whole class of known DNA damage and/or DNA repair response genes and their impact on repeat expansion or contraction in human induced pluripotent cell lines derived from HD patients as well as established mouse embryonic stem cell HD models.
Identifying the exact network of DNA damage repair responsive gens that can positively or negatively regulate repeat expansion in HD has enormous importance for devising new interventions, both for diagnostic or therapeutic use, as well as for repurposing drugs
To learn more about Balmus Lab please visit: www.balmuslab.org
Person criteria
Education to PhD level in a relevant subject is required.
Knowledge of techniques in cell and molecular biology is essential although training in all relevant techniques will be provided.
Knowledge of the DNA Damage Response field highly desirable.
For further information and to apply, please click here.
For further enquiries please contact: gb318@medschl.cam.ac.uk