PhD in Translational Tumor Immunology & Epitope Spreading

EURAXESS Ireland; Basel; Hybrid; CHF 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

State-of-the-art infrastructure access

Longitudinal clinical samples access

Interdisciplinary environment

Collaboration with clinical groups

Job summary

University of Basel's Translational Immuno-Oncology group offers a PhD position in translational tumor immunology. The project combines genomic profiling, neoantigen analysis, and functional T cell screening to study endogenous anti-tumor responses in patients receiving targeted therapies.

You will work with cutting-edge sequencing and immune-profiling methods, with strong collaboration to clinical and basic science teams, aiming for durable tumor control and scientific independence.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in Biological Sciences, Immunology, Molecular Biology, Biomedical Sciences, Medicine or a related field.
• Excellent communication and writing skills in English.
• Initiative, scientific curiosity and the ability to work independently as well as within an interdisciplinary team.
• Experience with primary human samples, flow cytometry, T cell functional assays, molecular biology, cancer genomics, single-cell sequencing, immune-repertoire analysis, R or Python will be a plus.

Responsibilities

• Identification of patient-specific tumor mutations and candidate tumor antigens from tumor- and blood-derived genomic and transcriptomic data.
• Development and application of computational pipelines for HLA typing, neoantigen prediction and prioritization of patient-specific HLA class I- and class II-restricted T cell epitopes.
• Experimental identification and validation of tumor-specific T cell epitopes using functional screening approaches.
• Longitudinal characterization of endogenous anti-tumor T cell responses before, during and after cancer therapy to quantify epitope spreading.
• Single-cell RNA and TCR sequencing of tumor-reactive T cell populations to define their phenotype, clonality and dynamics over time.
• Characterization of antigen-specific T cells using activation-based assays, peptide–MHC tetramers and high-parameter spectral flow cytometry.
• Development and application, in collaboration with internal and external partners, of blood-based molecular approaches to follow tumor evolution alongside endogenous immune responses over time.
• Integration of immunological, molecular and clinical data to identify features associated with durable tumor control.
• Analysis and visualization of high-dimensional genomic, transcriptomic, immune-repertoire and immunological datasets.
• Preparation of scientific reports, conference presentations and journal articles.

Skills

T cell immunology

Cancer immunotherapy

English writing

Independent work

Interdisciplinary teamwork

Initiative

Quantitative biology interest

R

Python

Education

Master’s degree in Biological Sciences or related field

Tools

Flow cytometry

T cell assays

Molecular biology

Cancer genomics

Single-cell sequencing

Immune-repertoire analysis

R

Python

Job description

University of Basel's Translational Immuno-Oncology group offers a PhD position in translational tumor immunology. The project combines genomic profiling, neoantigen analysis, and functional T cell screening to study endogenous anti-tumor responses in patients receiving targeted therapies.

You will work with cutting-edge sequencing and immune-profiling methods, with strong collaboration to clinical and basic science teams, aiming for durable tumor control and scientific independence.