Postdoctoral Protein Crystallographer

Jobs in Structural Biology and Related Fields

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, United Kingdom

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) is one of the world’s most influential cancer research institutes. Their mission is to make the discoveries that defeat cancer. They have a long and distinguished history of research with a major impact on the outcome for cancer patients. Thier unique partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust (RMH) makes them the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe, performing high quality original basic research and translational studies.

The ICR was ranked as the UK’s top academic research centre in the 2008 Higher Education Funding Council Research Assessment Exercise. Based on their publication record, citations and impact they rank among the world’s leading cancer research centres. The Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit (CTU), embedded within the Division of 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.

The Cancer Therapeutics Unit’s 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.

A postdoctoral position for a protein crystallographer is available in Dr Rob van Montfort’s Hit Discovery and Structural Design Team within the CTU (). The Post-doc will be involved in high-throughput X-ray crystallography, fragment-based screening and structure-based drug design and will be responsible for crystallisation and structural analysis of protein-ligand complexes from one of the CTU’s drug discovery programmes. The successful candidate will interact closely with the biology, computational chemistry and medicinal chemistry teams at the CTU as well as with the protein crystallographers in the Division of Structural Biology in which the crystallography efforts of Dr van Montfort’s team are embedded.

Therefore the successful candidate will be expected to work across the two sites in Chelsea, London and Sutton, Surrey.

Applicants must have a PhD in a biological or physical science, and experience in macromolecular crystallography (to include protein biochemistry, protein crystallisation, & protein crystallography). Experience in molecular biology and/or structure-based drug design will be an advantage.

The starting salary for the position will be in the range £28,425 to £40,628 p.a. inclusive (based on previous post-doctoral experience) and the post is offered initially on a fixed term contract of 1 year in the first instance. Closing date: 30 September 2013.