Research Assistant/ Associate in Immune Reconstitution

We are a world class research-intensive university. We deliver teaching and learning of the highest quality. We play a leading role in economic, social and cultural development of the North East of England. Attracting and retaining high-calibre people is fundamental to our continued success.

The Role

An exciting opportunity arises to contribute to excellent translational immunology research in a superb academic setting. You will join a thriving, internationally recognised team focused on inborn errors of immunity and their therapy, led by Prof Sophie Hambleton. We share bespoke lab space with a diverse community of researchers in the Immunity and Inflammation Theme, housed in the Leech Building at the heart of Newcastle's Medical School.

In this project, funded by MRC as part of a randomised controlled clinical trial, we are investigating immune reconstitution after haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for inborn errors of immunity. The trial compares standard matched donor transplantation with a different strategy, in which T-cell depleted mismatched transplants are supplemented by a novel adjunctive cellular therapy, "memory T cell addback". Specifically, we hypothesise that T cell addback will lead to earlier reconstitution of antiviral T cell responses and thus protection from infection-related complications without incurring additional risks of graft-versus-host-disease. Confirmation of this effect could open the door to a new "universal donor" transplant strategy with a sizeable clinical impact. The trial is recruiting to target, meaning that longitudinal sampling will be completed well within the tenure of this post.

Your role will be to complete the longitudinal immunophenotyping of patient samples by spectral flow cytometry and perform integrative analysis of the overall results in R. You will further apply BD Rhapsody proteotranscriptomic profiling to explore the TCR usage and clonality of viral specific cells in the reconstituting T cell compartment by comparison with graft material. There may also be opportunities for further characterisation of the CD45RA-depleted "T cell addback". Training and support in single cell analysis will be available but a high level of competence in spectral flow cytometry (including panel design and trouble-shooting) as well as associated bioinformatic analysis in R are essential.

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