Postdoctoral Fellows: Malaria resis­tance research 

Deadline for appli­ca­tions: April 30, 2012 (posi­tion open until filled)

Organisation: Institut Pasteur de la Guyane

Location: Cayenne, French Guiana,

A 29-month post­doc­to­ral posi­tion in mala­ria resis­tance is avai­lable in the Laboratoty of Parasitology, National Reference Center for Malaria resis­tance, Institut Pasteur de la Guyane (IPG), Cayenne, French Guiana.

 

Context: Present in French Guiana since 1940, the Institut Pasteur de la Guyane (IPG), a non-pro­fit pri­vate foun­da­tion of public uti­li­ty, is part of the Institut Pasteur International Network. Its mis­sions are struc­tu­red around four com­po­nents: research, public health, edu­ca­tion and ser­vices. IPG is imple­men­ting a pro­gramme, cal­led STRonGer, fun­ded by the CAPACITY spe­ci­fic pro­gramme FP7-REGPOT-2011–1 (Grant agree­ment REGPOT-CT-2011–285837), that aims at fos­te­ring its research poten­tial on emer­ging and tro­pi­cal infec­tious diseases. This pro­gramme is mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­na­ry and involves local and European research teams wor­king on viro­lo­gy, para­si­to­lo­gy, ento­mo­lo­gy, eco­lo­gy, cli­ni­cal research, epi­de­mio­lo­gy and phytochemistry.

The host labo­ra­to­ry: The para­si­to­lo­gy lab focuses on resis­tance of mala­ria para­site, either Plasmodium fal­ci­pa­rum, the main patho­gen spe­cies, or P. vivax, which now repre­sents about 2/3 of the mala­ria cases diag­no­sed in the Guiana Shield and South America. As National Reference Center for mala­ria resis­tance for 25 years, the lab has a long-term inter­est in opti­mi­zing anti­ma­la­rial drugs uses. Plasmodium cir­cu­la­ting in South America pre­sents many ori­gi­nal aspects in terms of resis­tance and mole­cu­lar mar­kers as, in this part of the world, resis­tant para­sites appea­red de novo and in situ. Then, resis­tant geno­types are usual­ly dif­ferent from those obser­ved in Africa and South East Asia even if the genes are often the same. Despite this inter­est, stu­dies on South American iso­lates are limi­ted. Therefore, our lab conducts research pro­grams on P. fal­ci­pa­rum to explore: i) its resis­tance mecha­nisms to anti­ma­la­rial drugs, ii) its evo­lu­tion ad iii) its in vivo and in vitro phe­no­ty­ping against cur­rent­ly used or future anti­ma­la­rial drugs. For infor­ma­tion about pro­jects and recent publi­ca­tions, please visit: http://www.pasteur-cayenne.fr/stronger and http://www.pasteur-cayenne.fr.

 

Job posi­tion: The objec­tive of this 29-month ini­tia­tive is to gain insight the resis­tance mecha­nism of P. fal­ci­pa­rum against anti­ma­la­rial drugs tar­ge­ting the diges­tive vacuole. This issue will be inves­ti­ga­ted using French Guianan iso­lates recent­ly adap­ted to in vitro mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and geno­ty­ped with a high through­put method. We seek a high­ly moti­va­ted indi­vi­dual with expe­rience and pre­vious exper­tise in mala­ria resis­tance and even­tual­ly bio­in­for­ma­tics to ana­lyse whole genome sequen­cing data. Skills in mala­ria in vitro culture would be appreciated.

Minimum qua­li­fi­ca­tions

• PhD or post­doc­to­ral expe­rience in a rele­vant field of biology.
• First author in publi­ca­tions, inde­pendent cri­ti­cal thinking.
• Strong know­ledge in parasitology.
• Adequate unders­tan­ding of stu­dy desi­gn, sta­tis­tics and data analysis
• Exercise of auto­no­my, rigor and adap­ta­bi­li­ty qualities.

Application: Please respond by e‑mail to Eric Legrand (elegrand@pasteur-cayenne.fr”>elegrand@pasteur-cayenne.fr and stronger@pasteur-cayenne.fr) with a sta­te­ment of inter­est and career objec­tives, CV, and names with contact infor­ma­tion for three refe­rences. Application dead­line: Open until filled.