PhD candidate in SARS-COV-2/COVID-19 Research (LDRI and de Duve Institutes)
Deadline: 07/01/2021
The IREC/DDUV/LDRI institutes at UCLouvain (Brussels, Belgium) are urgently seeking for a motivated PhD candidate to work on COVID-19 research in the domain of network precision medicine.
This PhD position will address some of the most important questions in infectiology today, using cutting-edge technologies and tools, including Next-generation sequencing, proteomics, microbiomics and big data analysis. This project is likely to give rise to paradigm-shifting in the way we address the diseases and diagnosis. The project is also expected to produce impactful publications in outstanding scientific journals.
Therefore, this is a great opportunity for a highly motivated ambitious junior scientist who aspires to become doctor in the field of network medicine applied to infectious diseases.
Details of the UNCOVER research project
After its emergence in China in the late 2019, clinicians have rapidly been struck by the diversity of the clinical presentations of SARS-CoV-2 infection, ranging from asymptomatic disease to multiple organ failure and death. The present project aims at generating a system biology network that can recapitulate the complexity of processes underlying differential SARS-CoV-2 phenotypic responses through exploitation of clinical -omics data. This project includes genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, microbiomics and viromics data for apprehending critical strata of biology involved in the response to the infection. The objectives of the project are (i) to describe the local nasopharyngeal (NP) microbiota/viroma/transcriptome/genome of the virus and his host as well as the systemic transcriptome/proteome/metabolome and the genome of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients at acute and convalescent phases in a cohort of 125 patients with different COVID-19 phenotypes; (ii) to correlate the patient -omics profiles and SARS-CoV-2 genomic variability with the different COVID-19 phenotypes through the use of a network-based integrative approach; (iii) to highlight the crucial pathways determining the COVID-19 phenotype in order to predict singular susceptibility to develop a severe/critical COVID-19 phenotype, and to find predictive biomarkers of the clinical evolution; (iv) to integrate all these -omics data through system biology network allowing to provide an exhaustive overview of the interaction between all the investigated -omics strata, and (v) to define specific signatures able to capture the phenotype diversity and the pathological evolution. This will open the way to improved clinical care through the application of precision medicine and advancing researches towards effective treatment and/or vaccine strategies.
Contact: laure.elens@uclouvain.be
More information at THIS LINK.
Coordinateur·trice en Recherche Clinique
Pour l'Institut de recherche santé et société (IRSS), du Secteur des sciences de la santé (SSS)
Site principal : Bruxelles (Woluwé)
Contrat sur ressources extérieures, à temps partiel (80%) ou à temps plein, pour une durée déterminée (1 an)
Entrée en fonction : dès que possible
More information at THIS LINK.