Discovery of cancer antigens that are epigenetically-regulated as biomarkers and vaccine candidates
Queen Mary University of London
About the Project
We are seeking a graduate who is passionate about contributing to cancer research and who has a background in immunology or epigenetics and a degree at least at the upper second-class honours level. The PhD candidate will characterize cancer antigens regulated through an epigenetic complex that the Rowe lab have discovered to control immunogenicity1. Dr Rowe’s lab is based at the Blizard Institute where we perform chromatin and immunological assays. The PhD candidate will collaborate with Prof Kassiotis’ lab, who work on cancer antigens and are based at the Francis Crick Institute. The project will also involve collaborations with cancer biologists, immunologists and clinicians at Queen Mary University, at University College London and abroad.
We are seeking a graduate who is passionate about contributing to cancer research and who has a background in immunology or epigenetics and a degree at least at the upper second-class honours level. The PhD candidate will characterize cancer antigens regulated through an epigenetic complex that the Rowe lab have discovered to control immunogenicity1. Dr Rowe’s lab is based at the Blizard Institute where we perform chromatin and immunological assays. The PhD candidate will collaborate with Prof Kassiotis’ lab, who work on cancer antigens and are based at the Francis Crick Institute. The project will also involve collaborations with cancer biologists, immunologists and clinicians at Queen Mary University, at University College London and abroad.
Survival rates for non-small cell lung cancer have improved in part due to advances in immunotherapies2. This has led to a huge current interest in developing therapies that target the immune system to combat cancers3,4 and to understanding how tumours evade immunity. The long-term goal of this research is to make therapeutic or even preventative vaccines5. Collective efforts have identified cohorts of pan-cancer tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) but more research is needed to pinpoint which of them represent biomarkers of immune evasion and which could be vaccine candidates. This PhD project will adopt a discovery approach to catalogue which tumour-associated antigens in solid tumours are regulated epigenetically. For this, the student will initially knockout the human silencing hub and its associated factors in lung adenocarcinoma cell lines. They will characterize chimeric transcripts and peptides, which we expect to derive from retroelements6 (jumping genes), usually kept dormant through transcriptional silencing7,8. Once it has been determined which cancer antigens (or ‘dark antigens’) are epigenetically-regulated, the PhD candidate will track expression and regulation of these peptides and their cognate T cells in lung cancer patients. In sum, this work will identify prognostic biomarkers and peptide vaccine candidates and will shed light on the phenomenon of immune evasion and on how our immune system works.
The post is based at the Blizard Institute, Whitechapel campus. The Blizard Institute has state of the art infrastructure, molecular biology labs, tissue culture and core facilities including flow cytometry, the genome centre for Next Generation Sequencing and spatial transcriptomics and microscopy and immunohistochemistry facilities. The Rowe Lab is part of the QMUL Epigenetics hub, which represents a closely-interacting group of epigenetics labs, who hold internal and external seminars. The post holder will also be affiliated with the Barts Cancer Institute for collaborations and cancer-related seminars.
The PhD candidate should be available to start in September/October 2024. Please apply using the link below:
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