PhD fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism - UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium

Fellowship: A PhD fellowship is available for a scientist to conduct a research project in endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition in the frame of a doctoral thesis. The position is open in July 2022 and will remain open until suitable candidates are found.

Project: Direct and indirect mechanisms controlling glucagon and insulin secretion: therapeutic implications for diabetes

The endocrine pancreas plays a key role in glucose homeostasis. It is organized in islets mainly composed of beta, alpha- and delta-cells, secreting, respectively, insulin, glucagon and somatostatin. Insulin is the major hypoglycemic hormone whereas glucagon is hyperglycemic. Somatostatin potently inhibits both insulin and glucagon secretions. Diabetes is characterized by an impaired glucose homeostasis and results from a deficit in insulin which is absolute in type 1 diabetes (due to beta-cell destruction) or relative in type 2 diabetes (as a result of decreased beta-cell mass and insulin resistance). Diabetes is also characterized by a defective glucagon secretion (hypersecretion and altered response to hypoglycemia) of unknown origin. All cell types of the islets influence each other, but the nature of these heterologous interactions is still poorly understood. The objectives of the projects in the lab are (a) to study the direct and indirect mechanisms controlling glucagon and insulin secretion, using various approaches, from the gene to the cell and to the whole organism, (b) to investigate the causes of their dysregulation in diabetes, and (c) to identify new therapeutic targets to correct them and to normalize glucose homeostasis in diabetes. Studies will be performed on both human and mouse tissue.

Some techniques used in the lab : Cell culture, Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting (FACS), gene expression analysis, secretion assays, live cell imaging, conventional and confocal fluorescence microscopy, patch-clamp, cloning and adenovirus construction, transgenic mouse models, ...

Publications of the team : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=gilon+P&sort=pubdate

Environment: Our lab is composed of ~15 researchers including PhD students and post-docs from various nationalities. The lab is located in a pleasant area in Brussels.

Procedure: The applicant should send, in a single PDF file, to the email address below (i) a motivation letter, (ii) a detailed curriculum vitae mentioning a phone number, an e.mail address, the birthdate, photo, copies of relevant university degrees + certificate of experimentation on laboratory animals, and (iii) names, addresses, e.mail addresses and phone numbers of at least 2 (ideally 3) persons of reference.

To Dr. P. Gilon [email protected]