PhD Positions in Chemical Biology and Drug Development

Post-doc Position in Chemical Biology

 A project of our laboratory, enabled by an ERC Advanced Grant, aims at developing macrocycle-based therapeutics for currently "untargetable" protein targets (https://actu.epfl.ch/news/christian-heinis-wins-erc-advanced-grant). We intend to achieve this goal by tapping into a new chemical space to be generated by "merging" biological and chemical compound libraries. The biological library components are ribosomally translated peptides encoded by DNA, and the chemical library components are structurally diverse chemicals, as illustrated in the figure below.

The goal of the PhD project is to establish the above described approach by cloning and expressing the peptide libraries, establishing chemical modification reactions to diversity the peptides with chemical fragments, automating the combinatorial working steps by robotics, and screening the libraries for ligands to challenging protein targets. The experimental work involves molecular biology techniques, synthetic chemistry, peptide synthesis, analytical techniques, lab automation and ligand characterization.

Applicants need to be highly motivated, capable to lead a project independently, and able to interact and communicate well. They should have an education in chemistry, biochemistry or a related subject. Starting date date: November 2021 - April 2022

To apply for the position, please send a short letter of motivation, a CV and a list of references to Christian Heinis ([Email Address Removed]).

Laboratory website: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lppt