PhD student positions (# of pos: 6)

Six 3 year fixed-term PhD positions are open within the Marie Sklodowska Curie Doctoral Network (HORIZON-MSCA-DN) project DisCo-I (project 101072828): Discovering Collagen I degradation process in chronic diseases with fibrotic component.

DisCo-I is multi-disciplinary, comprehensive and inter-sectoral doctorate training programme, with special emphasis on training doctoral candidates in both industrial and academic environments. The successful doctoral candidates (DCs) will work in the context of fibrosis-related chronic diseases (CDs, including chronic kidney disease- CKD, liver diseases-LDs and heart failure- HF), being amongst the biggest societal burdens in Europe.

Extracellular matrix (ECM) is a key player in several biological and pathological processes, among others in fibrosis, with an excessive accumulation of type I collagen (COL1) being a predominant component of the fibrotic tissue. The main scientific goal of DisCo-I is to improve the understanding of molecular mechanisms associated with COL1 degradation in major fibrosis-associated CDs.

The programme involves interaction within a network of 2 multidisciplinary academic and 3 industrial partners (SMEs), with a strong focus and experience in educating and training DCs, with all DCs receiving their PhD with highest honors and generally >5 scientific publications. They will provide training in scientific and technological skills, combining state-of-the-art –omics approaches and data (peptidomics, proteomics and transcriptomics) in a bioinformatics framework, followed by in- and ex-vivo investigation, complemented with training in translational skills and competences. The DCs will get exposure to both academic and industry environments to support the future translation of research findings into innovative diagnostics and therapies.

The DisCo-I network includes:

Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM), Toulouse, France (http://renalfibrosis.fr and https://www.i2mc.inserm.fr/en/joost-schanstra-2/ ): has extensive experience with animal models of accelerated kidney fibrosis, and evaluation of drug efficacy of a number of compounds with potential anti-fibrotic capacities.

RD –Nephrologie (RDN), Montpellier, France (https://www.rd-n.org/ ): spin-off of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, promoting and coordinating research in the renal and cardiovascular field, vast expertise in pre-clinical and clinical studies.

Nordic Bioscience (NB), Herlev, Denmark (https://www.nordicbioscience.com/ ): leader in biomarker development using immunoassay-based Protein FingerprintTM and extracellular matrix expert.

Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens (BRFAA), Athens, Greece (http://www.bioacademy.gr/lab/vlahou ): an expert in tissue proteomics and analysis of -omics data for knowledge extraction, and understanding disease pathophysiology.

Mosaiques Diagnostics GmbH (MOS), Hannover, Germany (https://mosaiques-diagnostics.de/ ): leader in biomarker development based on mass spectrometry analysis of urinary peptides, and their translation to support patient management.

Doctoral candidate 1 (DC1)

• Location: Mosaiques Diagnostics GmbH (MOS), Hannover, Germany
• Project: Analysis of COL1 degradation fingerprint in urine. Focused on defining “COL1 degradome” (peptide signature) in urine (including Post-Translational Modifications, PTMs) and in silico prediction of proteases responsible for its generation; development of COL1-focused biomarker panels for detection of fibrosis.

Doctoral candidate 2 (DC2)

• Location: Nordic Bioscience (NB), Herlev, Denmark
• Project: Investigation of COL1 synthesis and degradation fingerprint in serum and urine and development of novel Protein Fingerprint biomarker assays for COL1 degradation. Focused on examining existing assays for COL1 in serum (and/or urine) samples of CKD, HF and LD patients, as well as developing novel immunoassays to detect organ/disease specific fragments and/or PTMs of COL1 in circulation, and test those in samples of CKD, HF and LD patients.

Doctoral candidate 3 (DC3)

• Location: RD–Nephrologie (RDN), Montpellier, France
• Project: Fibrosis and COL1 degradation in SNX and obsese rats. The goal is to establish a common profile of col1 degradation related to fibrosis in chronic diseases with a focus on PTMs of collagen 1. Fibrosis will be investigated in SNX rats during disease progression (kidney, heart) and in obese SNX rats (kidney, heart, liver) by histologic evaluation, western blot and qPCR, and tissue proteomics; ex-vivo protease activity examination and assessment of protease expression in the different fibrotic tissues by western blot and qPCR methods.

Doctoral candidate 4 (DC4)

• Location: Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens (BRFAA), Athens, Greece, and Nordic bioscience (NB), Herlev, Denmark
• Project: Tissue proteome signature of CDs with fibrotic component. Focused on generation of heart, liver, and kidney tissue proteomics data (intracellular and ECM) from fibrotic and non-fibrotic tissue samples, and defining unique and common intracellular and ECM proteins associated with fibrosis in different organs; Investigation of PTMs on COL1 in situ and proteins found to be involved in COL1 degradation.

Doctoral candidate 5 (DC5)

• Location: Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM), Toulouse, France, and RD –Nephrologie (RDN), Montpellier, France
• Project: COL1 degradation in animal models. Focused on investigating the urinary peptidome of different animal models of kidney fibrosis and determining the similarity to human disease; correlation of the in-situ ECM changes to the urinary peptides and verification ex-vivo the hypothesis that treatment of kidney fibrosis should focus on the degradation of the ECM.

Doctoral candidate 6 (DC6)

• Location: Mosaiques Diagnostics GmbH (MOS), Hannover, Germany
• Project: Molecular mechanism of COL1 degradation. Focused on retrieval and analysis of publicly available gene expression/ transcriptomics data, followed by differential expression analysis; mining of molecular features associated with COL1 degradation, and integrative analysis of the multi-omics molecular data towards describing the COL1 degradation mechanisms.

Within DisCo-I fair and equal treatment of all candidates is a priority, with equal opportunities regardless race, gender and origin. We look forward to your application!