The Open Targets team at our 5 year anniversary celebration in June 2019
Join our team!
Open Targets is based on the stunning Wellcome Genome Campus, home to some of the world's foremost institutes and organisations in genomics and computational biology. We work in dynamic teams at the interface of academic and pharma industry science on a crucial problem, how to be more successful in making drugs. Working with us, you will be exposed to new technologies and a dynamic set of scientists dedicated to translational research.
Our posts are usually in either one of our academic partners, The Wellcome Sanger Institute or EMBL-EBI and have terms and conditions associated with the employer.
Important note: applications may be reviewed on an ongoing basis and the advertised post(s) may be filled before the stated deadline.
Senior Research Manager
Application closing date: 20 April 2024
Join the Open Targets Operation Team and the Wellcome Sanger Institute to provide professional scientific research and project management support services.
This role will oversee and drive the scientific operations of the Open Targets research programme, and will include extensive networking across institute departments to deliver Financial, Legal, Ethical, HR and scientific support to the Open Targets project portfolio. The Senior Research Manager will ensure Open Targets processes around projects, align with institutional policies and will create strategies to drive ongoing process improvement.
Postdoctoral fellow
Application closing date: 24 April 2024
The Petsalaki group uses network analysis, data integration and machine learning to study human cell signalling. For this Open Targets project, the group is collaborating with the Garnett group (Sanger institute) to discover combination targets for two types of cancer with unmet need.
We have already finished collecting the largest dual CRISPR guide dataset to date comprising 65,000 gene pairs across two tissue types and approximately 50 cell lines, and are now looking to understand principles underpinning successful combination gene pairs in cancer and to discover actionable gene pairs that could have an impact in the clinic.
In this role, you will integrate this unique and exciting data with other omics datasets, performing systems level and network-based analyses to interpret and extract value from the data. You will also be developing an AI-based method (e.g. through graph neural networks) to leverage our unique dataset for the prediction of combination targets beyond the ones measured in our experiments.
Staff/Senior Scientist
Application closing date: 24 April 2024
The position is based in the Garnett lab, world-leaders in functional genomics, in collaboration with the Petsalaki group at EMBL-EBI. Drug combination therapies for cancer can provide new treatments for patients and combat drug resistance. You will join a multidisciplinary team performing large-scale two-gene CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screens in cancer cell lines to systematically identify and validate target combinations.
Substantial CRISPR-Cas9 screening datasets have been generated and initial computational pipelines established. You will support the analysis and interpretation of these unique data, as well as lead the mechanistic validation of candidate target combinations. Specifically, this includes applying cancer therapeutics knowledge to guide the analysis and interpretation of large-scale screening datasets to gain novel insights. Additionally, you will use a range of cutting-edge cellular and molecular biology techniques to validate target combinations emerging from these analyses.
Research Assistant
Application closing date: 26 April 2024
A position is now available for a Research Assistant on a 1 year, fixed term contract to join the research group of Gosia Trynka in close collaboration with Andrew Bassett and Open Targets partners at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. This is a Computational Research Assistant role to contribute in the analysis of large single-cell RNAseq data from iPSC-derived microglia to advance drug discovery. The scientific objective of the project is to understand the genetic architecture of multiple neuroinflammatory cell traits in microglia.
Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis so the role may close early if a successful candidate is appointed.
Senior Research Assistant – Technical Specialist (Maternity Cover)
Application closing date: 2 May 2024
We are seeking an enthusiastic and motivated scientist with expertise in experimental oncology to provide experimental, scientific and operational support to the Open Targets Validation Lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. We work with world-leading experts from both academia and industry to run discovery projects for targets of new therapeutic potential, and the mission of the Open Targets Validation Lab is to provide additional experimental evidence to support the relevance of these targets in disease biology. This position offers an exciting opportunity to work on a project that comprises the largest, to date, dataset of dual CRISPR perturbations (65K pairs, 45 cell lines, 2 tissue types) and validate therapeutic hypotheses that exploit synthetic lethality in cancer.