Postdoctoral Research Associate - Institute in the Park, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital

The University of Liverpool Department of Women's & Children's Health are seeking a talented and highly motivated individual to work as a postdoctoral research associate in the UK’s ‘Experimental Arthritis Treatment Centre for Children (EATC4Children; www.EATC4Children.co.uk)’, University of Liverpool. The EATC4Children is based within the ‘Institute in the Park’ at the state-of-the-art ‘Alder Hey in the Park’. It sits within the University’s Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences within the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, but works with colleagues across the whole of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences.

The EATC4Children comprises a strategic partnership between the University of Liverpool, the Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, the University Hospital Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Sheffield. Supported by the charity Versus Arthritis, the EATC4Children is the only paediatric EATC. It represents paediatric rheumatology/musculoskeletal disorders within the UK Musculoskeletal Translational Research Collaboration (UK MSK TRC) a collaboration between the NIHR and Versus Arthritis to further research in musculoskeletal disorders and to help develop new diagnostics and treatments for patients. It thus has a national and international focus, working closely with all the NIHR BRCs with a musculoskeletal theme and adult-based EATCs, in close collaboration with all the major clinical academic departments of paediatric rheumatology across the UK, including the NIHR CRN/ Versus Arthritis Paediatric Rheumatology Clinical Studies Group.

The post is directly funded by the NIHR Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Paediatric Excellence Initiative site based at Liverpool. The post holder will work alongside colleagues in the EATC4Children and be based at the Institute in the Park at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and the University of Liverpool.

The NIHR GOSH BRC in partnership with the University College London (UCL) Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH) has firmly established itself as the leading paediatric research centre in Europe. GOSH is the only specialist Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) for children and has raised an impressive £196m of external grant support over four years with £8.49 income in 2020/21 for every £1 NIHR BRC support. The GOSH BRC vision and strategy is to drive state-of-the-art methodology platforms spanning from GCT production through genomics and bio-engineering to advanced health informatics, combining these with high-level experimental trial expertise to accelerate breakthrough discovery medicine for children with rare and complex diseases. The five BRC Themes are: 1) Gene stem and cellular therapies; 2) Genomic medicine; 3) Accelerating novel therapies; 4) Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine; 5) Applied child health informatics. With 19 UK highly specialised services, GOSH provides an active research environment for >184 rare disease cohorts across the country, (phenotyped, many genotyped, shared on the BRC website).

Building on strong existing collaborations this BRC will strategically enlarge the research network towards a national Paediatric Excellence Initiative with partner institutions Alder Hey, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s and Sheffield Children’s hospitals, each collaborating with specific BRC Themes fostering technology exchange, education and making early translational therapies available to a maximum number of patients. A key focus of the collaboration with Alder Hey will focus on the work of the EATC4Children, and the specific programme associated with this post.

Nationwide, the BRC translated six new validated laboratory assays into clinical practice since 2015, improving treatment for >850 patients/year (2019/20) and pioneered Rapid Paediatric WGS and Fetal Exome Sequencing, both now integrated into the NHS and informed clinical management of ~1200 families in the last 18 months.

The post holder will work within the EATC4Children, Liverpool, and liaise across the Paediatric Excellence Initiative at Alder Hey (hosted by the EATC4Children, University of Liverpool), focusing on projects relating to the GOSH BRC ‘Accelerating novel therapies’ (ANT) theme with a specific focus on childhood lupus. The post holder will be involved in the UK JSLE Cohort Study, and lead on projects investigating molecular and cellular mechanisms of immune cell dysregulation in SLE (across age groups). The EATC4Children’s JSLE workstream aims at developing molecular tools that allow patient stratification and individualised treatment. A focus of this post will be the investigation of T cell mediated inflammation and damage in jSLE, accessing state-of-the-art technology including spatial transcriptional profiling, CyTOF mass spectrometry, multi-colour flow cytometry, epigenetic profiling and transcription factor:chromatin interactions.

The post holder will be required to work on promising early translational projects in JSLE following a stepwise approach. They will be expected to have knowledge of immune cell biology, transcriptional profiling, basic knowledge in bioinformatic pathway identification that will be fostered during the tenure, interrogation and validation of molecular signatures in the blood and other human tissues, and in vitro (cell culture) validation of candidate treatment targets.

The post holder will be expected to actively contribute to (and will also benefit from) EATC4Children group and laboratory meetings, weekly journal clubs, routine laboratory responsibilities, such as sample processing rotas, etc.

The group is nationally and internationally connected with leading experts in the field and the successful candidate will be expected to communicate and collaborate with these partners. Respectful and supportive behaviour towards students, colleagues, peers and supervisors is expected.

For further information, please see the Job Description. The deadline for applications is 21st June 2023.