PhD or Postdoctoral fellow in Perturbational Systems Biology in Liver Regeneration

Research Project

We are seeking a motivated new PhD candidate or Postdoctoral fellow who wants to join an exciting collaborative research program within the VIB-Center for Inflammation Research between the Guilliams and the Saelens team.

In this research project you will apply in vivo CRISPR screens to study the molecular mechanisms driving liver regeneration. This project is supported by an ERC Advanced Grant (2025 – 2030). Mammals have a poor regenerative capacity as compared to distant vertebrate relatives, such as salamanders that can regenerate limbs and organs throughout life. The ability to regenerate organs most probably originated as a derivative of normal developmental growth, rather than as a novel adaptive trait.

All vertebrates display an abundant capacity for organ growth in the neonatal window, but only a restricted set of species can efficiently reactivate the neonatal organ growth program in adulthood. Sadly, the human is not one of these species, and this means that human regenerative medicine represents an enormous challenge. The liver is one of the only organs that has maintained some regenerative capacity in adult mammals.

The goal of our liver regeneration research is to understand the molecular mechanisms driving liver regeneration so well that we can manipulate the molecular circuits coordinating tissue growth to boost the regenerative capacity of the liver. In both humans and rodents there is a ten-fold increase in liver mass between birth and young adulthood. The neonatal liver growth capacity can increase further, as neonatal mice even survive a partial hepatectomy.

We hypothesize that the coordinated proliferation of liver cells is orchestrated by evolutionarily conserved molecular circuits that ensures liver function avoids organ failure during the rapid neonatal tissue growth. The adult liver has better re‑growth capacity than other organs, but this remains far below the neonatal growth capacity. The adult liver can replenish up to 70% of its mass after surgical resection, allowing the removal of liver tumors.

However, for a liver resection to be safe, the liver remnant should be at least 30% of the initial liver volume, putting the maximal adult liver growth capacity at a three‑fold increase. If the remaining liver is too small, the patient has high risk of developing the Small‑For‑Size Syndrome (SFSS), a post‑operative failure causing death of one in three patients.

For decades scientists have tried to boost hepatocyte proliferation to accelerate liver regeneration. However, while signals involved in hepatocyte proliferation are known, all attempts to pharmacologically augment regeneration by boosting hepatocyte proliferation have so far failed. In our research, we will step away from the conventional hepatocyte‑centric view of liver regeneration. We propose a paradigm shift in which we consider the liver as a repeated structure of integrated liver modules and hypothesize that the key to successful liver regeneration is to maintain the integrity of each individual liver module, as this will be vital to maintain the function of liver cells during organ growth.

We have developed in vivo single‑cell CRISPR technologies to screen for dozens of molecular factors during liver regeneration in vivo. We will apply these technologies to unravel the causal circuits driving the regenerative programs in the distinct liver cells. You will be embedded in a close‑knit team composed of biomedical experts, technologists and computational experts, providing a unique atmosphere where the discovery of the causal circuits driving liver regeneration is gained through the application of novel probabilistic deep‑learning models that automatically extract mechanistic and statistical knowledge from your in vivo perturbational omics data.

This interdisciplinary atmosphere has been a main catalyst for many past successes: (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below).   .

• Master’s in bio‑engineering, medicine, molecular biology, immunology, or related field.
• FELASA certification.
• Experience in…