Vacancy: PhD candidate in Spatial Systems Biology for Translational Oncology (CRIG - UGent - VIB)


The VIB-Center for Inflammation Research is seeking for a PhD candidate for a research project in the Guilliams, Saelens and Saeys teams.

 

In this research project you will develop and apply algorithms to link clinical phenotypes of metastasis to molecular phenotypes in mouse models. It is known that metastases exhibit several types of spatial growth patterns which correlate with therapy efficiencies and overall survival. What is exactly driving these growth patterns is unknown, although the involvement of the tumor microenvironment is clear. These patterns can be mimicked with in vivo models of metastasis, which provides unique opportunities to mechanistically dissect what drives the different cell states. You will link clinically relevant phenotypes to putative murine microenvironments and use high-resolution spatial omics techniques to prioritize molecular factors that may drive the immune cell states. These will then be validated through in vivo screening, first on whether these indeed drive these aberrant states, and second on whether these indeed drive the growth pattern.