UK DRI King's College & Cambridge Cross-Centre Postdoctoral

Dementia is the biggest health challenge of our century.

To date there is no way to prevent it or even slow its progression, and there is an urgent need to fill the knowledge gap in our basic understanding of the diseases that cause it.

The UK Dementia Research Institute  (UK DRI) is the biggest UK initiative driving forward research to fill this gap.

Researchers at the UK Dementia Research Instiute at King's College London are using innovative approaches to explore the biological mechanisms involved in neurodegenerative diseases. Their goal is to defeat dementia by uncovering vital new knowledge that will lead to the design of smarter diagnostics and effective treatments. The team aims to understand the fundamental biological processes involved in dementia at a molecular level - and to use that knowledge to design new ways to diagnose and treat disease more precisely.

Developing new treatments that can prevent the onset of dementia or protect neurons from damage is hindered by our lack of knowledge in the fundamental causes and mechanisms behind neurodegeneration. Scientists at the UK DRI at Cambridge use cutting-edge approaches to build our understanding of the biological processes behind the earliest stages of neurodegeneration and ageing. They explore mechanisms causing the loss of vital connections between neurons and the pathways that drive repair of these connections, which are essential for memory formation and survival of brain cells and identify key molecular targets for translation into effective treatments to stop, slow or reverse dementia.

The UK Dementia Research Institute (DRI) groups of PD Dr Marc-David Ruepp (UK DRI at King's College London) and Prof Giovanna Mallucci (UK DRI at Cambridge) and are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate for a 3-year collaborative project. The UK DRI is a national consortium focused on cutting-edge dementia research funded by the Medical Research Council, Alzheimer's Society and Alzheimer's Research UK (www.ukdri.co.uk ).

The project aims at characterising the physiological and neuroprotective roles of the RNA binding protein RBM3, key to the cold shock response. The postdoctoral research associate will start with the characterisation and validation of the RBM3 RNA and protein interactomes in the group of Marc-David Ruepp at King's College London (https://ukdri.ac.uk/team/marc-david-ruepp ), followed by cellular and in vivo validation experiments of key candidate interactors in the group of Giovanna Mallucci at Cambridge University (https://ukdri.ac.uk/team/giovanna-mallucci ).