Senior Research Associate (Cardiovascular)

An exciting opportunity for a senior research associate to work full time on an innovative 3-year programme to develop complex cell models of vascular disease. This will involve working with a collaborative team of researchers at Manchester Met alongside established national and international collaborators. There will be opportunities to visit the labs of our collaborators in Europe and USA to learn new techniques and transfer knowledge to Manchester Met. You will also have the opportunity to engage with multi-disciplinary scientists from cell biology to surface engineering and clinicians within the Greater Manchester region in order to develop clinically relevant models of vascular disease.

You will be expected to bring your own established skills within this research area in order to accelerate the programme and achieve our ambitious research objectives. 

This project will be based within the Cardiovascular Science Theme and will be focussed on developing a 3D patient-derived vascular model system, to enable identification of the underlying pathogenic mechanism/s for potential targeting with novel drugs. We will determine the impact of diabetes on the angiogenic potential, adhesion and mechano-sensing properties of endothelial cells and their interaction with smooth muscle cells. This project will require a good working knowledge of endothelial cell biology; in particular in angiogenesis and/or smooth muscle cell biology, using tissue engineering in combination with live cell imaging and confocal microscopy techniques.

You will work within the Centre for Bioscience (https://www.mmu.ac.uk/research/research-centres/bioscience) at Manchester Met which currently has 38 Principal Investigators working across its four research themes; Cardiovascular Science, Neuroscience, Ageing & Lifelong Health and Microbiology. We benefit from recently completely refurbished laboratories, with a dedicated complex cell models suite equipped with state-of-the-art equipment including cell culture facilities, a hypoxic chamber, vascular flow platforms and real-time image analysis systems.

Our imaging facility includes a newly installed super resolution confocal microscope, calcium imaging, patch-clamping and microelectrode electrophysiology equipment whilst our genomics facility includes multiple next generation sequencing and pyrosequencing platforms. The Faculty of Science & Engineering opens its £120M new building in 2023. This will provide next generation teaching, office and conferencing space conjoined with the refurbished research labs.

Qualification we require:

You must have a PhD in a vascular biology related field and post-doctoral research experience in the same or related field.

If appropriate, you may apply for both roles.

Application requirements: 

Experience of the following would be advantageous:

• Experience in culture and characterisation of one or more of the following human cell types; endothelial colony forming cells, endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, pericytes, neuronal and glial cells.
• iPSC generation, maintenance, characterisation and targeted differentiation to neuronal, glial and vascular cell types
• primary vascular endothelial culture under flow conditions
• Experience in primary neuronal culture
• genetic modification of human cells using gene transfer and genome editing technologies
• experience in tissue engineering
• experience in live cell imaging and confocal microscopy
• applying quantitative evaluations of cellular phenotype
• working as part of a multi-disciplinary team

Evidence of Good Laboratory Practice in cell culture, excellent communication skills and an ability to thoroughly document and evaluate data is essential.

For an informal discussion, please contact; Project 1; Dr. Stephen White (stephen.white@mmu.ac.uk) or Dr Fiona Wilkinson (F.Wilkinson@mmu.ac.uk)

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