Dear all,

See below a post-doc position available at the Institute of cancer Research posted on behalf of my colleague Bissan Al-Lazikani which might be interesting for someone with a structural background. Please don't reply to me.

Rob van Montfort

The Institute of Cancer Research (a college of the University of London) is a world-class cancer research organisation with HEFCE RAE ratings of international excellence across all of its research programmes, including cancer drug discovery and development. In partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, we form the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe, dedicated to research that extends from epidemiology, genetics and molecular biology, through drug discovery and development, to cancer diagnosis and patient treatment.

Cancer Therapeutics is a multidisciplinary 'bench to bedside' centre, comprising around 160 staff dedicated to the discovery and development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. Our exciting goal is to discover high quality drug candidates for validated biological targets and to progress these candidates to clinical trial. All the scientific disciplines are in place to make this possible including medicinal chemistry, biology, drug metabolism and clinical specialists, all of whom focus on new molecular targets emerging from human genome and ground breaking cell biology research. Drug discovery is carried out in highly-focused multi-disciplinary project teams entirely analogous to those in a biotechnology company, with patient benefit as the primary driver.

This is a postdoctoral position in the new Computational Biology & Chemogenomics Team within Cancer Therapeutics, whose goal is to develop and apply novel computational biology and chemogenomic resources to support drug discovery. Cancer Therapeutics boasts a very large collection of pharmacological and cancer disease relevant data as well as access to novel, large scale, internal and external chemogenomic data resources. These combined, datasets have the potential to deliver valuable knowledge to guide cancer drug discovery.

The successful candidate will apply their skill in computational biology and software development to mine heterogeneous biological and chemical data, develop and apply novel, cancer specific, target assessment and prioritisation methods, using biological annotation, 3D-structural information, expression, mutation and interaction network data as well as chemical data. The candidate will apply these methods with the aim of identifying novel cancer drug targets, (both individual and multiple targets within a cancer relevant interaction network) and suggest suitable chemical tools for pursuing within Cancer Therapeutics. The candidate will develop experience in a drug discovery environment, exposure to the drug discovery process, and knowledge in the emerging chemogenomics field (the merger of biological and chemical knowledge at large scale), and will also bolster their programming and data mining skills.

Experience in computational biology, programming, data mining and data visualisation techniques is essential. Successful applicants will have ample opportunity to develop additional skills in post. This is an ideal opportunity for an enthusiastic, committed scientist to make an important contribution to improved therapies for cancer patients, while gaining experience and training in drug discovery skills in an institute with a track record of success. Appointments will be on a two-year contract in the first instance and salary will be on the Postdoctoral Training Fellow scale in the range of £29,695-£33,188 p.a. inclusive based on relevance of skills and experience.

To apply please email your CV and covering letter (addressing where you meet the person specification and incl. the names and addresses of two referees) to: [log in to unmask], quoting job reference number B340.

For more details see our website: http://www.icr.ac.uk/jobs/current_vacancies/14467.shtml

Closing date for applications: 15 January 2010