A post doctoral position is available in the Molecular Mycology Unit for 12 month, with the possibility of an extension, from June 2022.
The Project
The project, funded by the ANR, will focus on exploring fungal cell-wall polysaccharides for immunotherapies, exploiting Aspergillus fumigatus as a model organism.
In brief, invasive fungal infections (IFIs) are associated with high mortality rate. Despite antifungal drug treatment, the prognosis of IFIs is poor due to inadequate efficacy of the drugs, variable drug- susceptibility across fungal species due to their complex biological cycle and the emergence of drug-resistant strains. This demands new/alternative therapeutic strategies. On the other hand, cell wall is the fungal first component to interact with the host immune system. However, polysaccharides, the main constituents of the fungal cell wall are under-explored in the context of immunotherapy. This is due to several drawbacks associated with the fungal cell wall polysaccharides. Our project aims at overcoming those drawbacks of cell wall polysaccharides and making them useful in immunotherapies against fungal pathogens.
The candidate
PhD in the field related to mycology (or microbiology). Expertise in glycobiology techniques (different chromatography), primary cell culture work (macrophages and neutrophils, microscopy, flow-cytometry), animal handling, computational biology and good writing skill are desirable.
Contact
Interested candidates can contact V. AIMANIANDA (vkumar@pasteur.fr) with:
- curriculum vitae,
- brief description of research accomplishments so far,
- list of publications (indicating published and in preparation articles separately, with your name in bold and the name of your mentor/supervisor underlined)
- names of three references.