Prion diseases - Prion-host cell interaction/Chronic Wasting Disease prions

Prion diseases are infectious and fatal neurodegenerative disorders. They are characterized by the accumulation of a misfolded isoform (PrPSc) of the endogenous cellular prion protein PrPc. In humans, these diseases include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and variant CJD (vCJD). Examples of animal prion diseases are bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), scrapie in sheep and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in cervids.Chronic wasting disease is the most contagious prion disease which is found in wild and captive cervids in North America and since recently in Norway.In contrast to other prion diseases where infectivity is found exclusively in the brain, in CWD infectious prions are detectable in peripheral tissues such as muscle or antler velvet, and are shed in saliva, urine and feces. This contributes to efficient transmission among cervids.
Our aims are to characterise CWD isolates in vitro and in vivo, using biochemical methods, in vitro prion amplification and cell biological approaches, as well as mouse bioassays. Specific goals are to study transport abilities and neuroinvasion of CWD prions, and to characterise transmission barriers of individual isolates to non-cervid species including humans and livestock.
We are also studying the impact of prion infection on cholesterol metabolism and endocytic vesicle trafficking (for reference see Bach C, Gilch S et al., JBC 2009; Gilch S et al, CMLS 2009; Shim SY et al., Sci Rep 2016). We mainly use cell biological approaches such as confocal microscopy to investigate these questions with the goal to identify links to neurodegeneration and novel therapeutic targets for prion and prion-like diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
For more information, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gilch+s and visit our lab website www.ucalgary.ca/gilchlab .
Required qualifications are a profound interest in neurodegenerative/protein misfolding/infectious diseases, a GPA > 3.5 and ideally previous experience with protein analysis and cell culture models.
The city of Calgary offers many recreational amenities from sports to cultural events. It is located closely to the Rocky Mountains and Banff National Park, providing a unique variety of hiking trails and skiing areas.
If you are interested in joining an ambitious research team please send your application including a statement of research interests and what fascinates you about prions, transcripts, contact information for three references and a CV to:

Sabine Gilch, PhD
Canada Research Chair in Prion Disease Research
Assistant Professor
[Email Address Removed]
Dept. of Ecosystem and Public Health
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
http://vet.ucalgary.ca/