The laboratory of Dr. David Oh, which is located at the UCSF Parnassus Heights campus, seeks an exceptional post-doctoral fellow who will independently plan, develop, and execute research projects. More information is provided below. If interested, please forward a CV and the names of 3 references to [email protected].
Research in the Oh Laboratory uses translational approaches to probe how the adaptive immune response interacts with cancer to produce both beneficial and harmful outcomes after immunotherapy, specifically tumor control and autoimmune side effects (immune-related adverse events). We use multifaceted approaches to identify novel immune effector populations in samples from immunotherapy-treated patients, including next-generation sequencing (T cell receptor sequencing, single-cell RNA sequencing and proteomics), cytometry (flow and mass cytometry), and high-dimensional tissue imaging. We then test the functional relevance of these populations using ex vivo immune assays as well as genetically engineered murine models. The goal of this work is to discover and validate immune effector populations in cancer patients, and novel therapeutic approaches targeted to these populations.
We have recently identified an effector population of cytotoxic CD4+ T cells which are found in tumors from bladder cancer patients, express cytolytic molecules, and can directly kill autologous tumor (Oh DY et al. Cell 2020). We are further exploring the mechanisms that specifically regulate the activity of these cells, and therapeutic approaches that may modulate this class of effectors. Ongoing projects would focus on innovative single-cell transcriptomic and proteomic approaches to identify putative regulatory pathways for these cells in primary patient samples, including spatial transcriptomic platforms in development, and functional interrogation with emerging single-cell effector assays. Single-cell genomic analysis will be enabled by computational biologists in our own group as well as close collaborations with the laboratories of Jimmie Ye (UCSF Medicine/Rheumatology, Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub) and Lawrence Fong (UCSF Hematology/Oncology, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunothrapy). Our work is highly collaborative in nature and involves members in our group with expertise in both the wet lab and computational study of human immune responses to cancer, as well as with other collaborating immunologists, clinicians, and computational biologists within the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Required qualifications:
- PhD degree in immunology, cancer biology, or a related field
- Direct experience with immune profiling and functional assays involving primary samples from patients, including flow cytometry/FACS, cytotoxicity, cytokine secretion, ELIspot
- Experience with live cell imaging (eg fluorescence time-lapse imaging)
- Proficient in cell culture techniques relating to primary samples from patients, eg T cell cloning, ex vivo T cell expansion
- Willingness to develop a working knowledge of single-cell genomics analysis methods
- Knowledge of and experience with PCR and basic molecular biology techniques (nucleic acid isolation, recombination, site-directed mutagenesis, transformation, transfection)
- Experience in lab maintenance and assisting team members
- Ability to learn new methods/techniques
- Attention to detail is required
- Excellent organizational skills
- Excellent oral/written communication and analytical skills
- Demonstrated record of excellent attendance and reliability
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with library preparation/analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing, single-cell TCR sequencing, or other next-generation sequencing (bulk RNA sequencing, whole-exome sequencing) is strongly preferred
- Experience with CRISPR a plus
- Experience with lentiviral vector design, construction, characterization, preparation a plus
- Experience with protein biochemistry (protein isolation from mammalian cells or E coli, generation and isolation of recombinant fusion proteins, co-immunoprecipitation, Western blotting) a plus