Research Fellow - Bioinformatics - Environmental Carcinogens / Tumour Evolution Scientist

TRACERx is supported by the excellent bioinformatics facilities already available in our Centre together with substantial investment in bioinformatics staff, data storage and computer processing power. TRACERx has been highly successful, as of 2023 sequencing data from more than 400 patients have been fully analysed resulting in a flow of high-impact publications, including manuscripts in Nature, Cell, Science and New England Journal of Medicine. PEACE is a pan cancer national research autopsy programme in which post-mortem sampling allows access to tissue from all sites of metastasis, and to date has recruited over 390 patients and performed over 240 autopsies. The combination of both TRACERx and PEACE with patient co-recruitment has established an unprecedented resource of multi-regional matched primary and metastatic tissue, and therefore facilitates tissue- and blood-based analyses from diagnosis to death.

We are seeking a collaborative and self‑motivated bioinformatician post‑doctoral fellow to work on investigating epigenetic alterations linked to different environmental aerosol exposures. Our previous work identified air pollutants associated with lung cancer promotion; however, the potential health risks associated with other aerosol exposures have not yet been well studied. Prof Nnenna Kanu leads the Genome Plasticity laboratory at the UCL Cancer Institute and is the Chief Scientific Officer of the Cancer Research UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence.

This project aims to analyse how immune cells respond to environmental aerosol exposures over time using WGS/RNA/ATAC/DNA methylation sequencing and the consequent metabolomic changes in immune and epithelial cells. The candidate will study how environmental aerosol exposures affect specific immune cells in mouse lung cancer models and analyse relevant published human data. Environmental aerosol exposures‑associated changes in human blood will be compared to early cancer signs observed in mice.

The position will be available for 2 years in the first instance, with the possibility of extension depending on funding availability. Appointment at Grade 7 is dependent upon having been awarded a PhD; if this is not the case, initial appointment will be at Research Assistant Grade 6B, with payment at Grade 7 being backdated to the date of final submission of the PhD thesis.

Applications should include a CV and a Cover Letter: In the Cover Letter please provide evidence of the essential and desirable criteria in the Person Specification part of the Job Description. The successful applicant should have a proven track record of publications, have previous experience with genomics data analysis, be fluent in at least one of the following programming languages: C++, Python or R, and will have strong skills in the field of genomics and desirably one or more of the following: tumour biology, ctDNA/ blood-based biomarkers, evolutionary biology, statistics and mathematics.