Location: | Dundee |
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Salary: | £36,024 to £44,263 |
Hours: | Full Time |
Contract Type: | Fixed-Term/Contract |
Placed On: | 8th April 2024 |
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Closes: | 3rd May 2024 |
Job Ref: | 4018 |
We are recruiting for an exceptional Medicinal Chemist / Synthetic Organic Chemist with experience in small molecule drug design and discovery to join the group of Professor Alessio Ciulli as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant within the expanding Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD) at the University of Dundee. This position is part of an academic, multi-disciplinary drug discovery team being formed within the Ciulli group, funded by the Cancer Grand Challenges, within KOODAC (https://cancergrandchallenges.org/teams/koodac). KOODAC’s mission is to discover and develop small-molecule drugs that degrade key oncogenic < span style="font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif;">drivers of solid tumours in children, as a novel therapeutic paradigm to treat pediatric cancers . The team will develop two types of degraders – proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) and molecular glue degraders. Both classes of degraders work by recruiting a ubiquitin E3 ligase to a target protein to induce target’s ubiquitination and degradation, leading to cell death. The team will focus on developing degraders for the ALK, DNAJB1::PRKACA, MYCN, EWSR1::FLI1 and PAX3::FOXO1 (or PAX7::FOXO1) oncoproteins, which have been implicated in the development and/or spread of neuroblastoma, fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, medulloblastoma, Ewings sarcoma and fusion positive rhabdomyosarcoma, respectively, in children.
The successful candidate will be expected to design, synthesize and characterise novel small-molecule degraders. You will boost the automated-syntheses and structure-guided medicinal chemistry approaches the team are taking to develop degrader drug candidates. You will work closely with the Senior Lead Scientist and the other PDRAs within the team in the Ciulli Lab, as well as scientists at our collaborating partners of the KOODAC project to develop a platform for the discovery, characterisation and development of degraders for the oncoproteins of interest. Compounds that show promise will enter an optimisation pipeline designed to produce orally bioavailable degraders that can be evaluated in the clinic and will dramatically improve cure rates for children affected by these cancers.
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The position is available immediately and for a fixed-term of 5 years. For further information about this role contact Professor Alessio Ciulli at a.ciulli@dundee.ac.uk. To find out more about Group please visit the group’s Website
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