Postdoc and PhD/Postdoc in two EU consortia

Job description

Two positions, one 3-year postdoc (EU consortium anTBiotic) and one 3-year postdoc or PhD student (JPI-AMR consortium Collateral Damage) position, are available immediately in the Systems Pharmacology group of Dr. Pia Abel zur Wiesch. The position is affiliated with the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM), Nordic EMBL Partnership Molecular Medicine and is located at the University of Tromsø, Norway. While the primary location is in Tromsø, the candidates have the option to visit international collaborators in industry and leading universities.
 

About the group

The Systems-Pharmacology group is headed by Dr. Abel zur Wiesch, Tenure Track Associate Professor at UiT, NCMM Young Associate Investigator and Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale School of Public Health. The aim of our work is to improve therapy in infectious diseases by using mathematical models to predict how much drug a patient should receive and how long and how often the patient should be treated. Our mathematical models describe both the intracellular reaction kinetics of drug-target binding as well as growth and death of populations of bacterial or cancer cells (Abel zur Wiesch & al., Science Transl. Med. 2015, Abel zur Wiesch et al., PLOS Computational Biology). We collaborate closely with experimentalists and clinicians. Two examples of on-going projects are:

anTBiotic
Tuberculosis (TB) today rivals HIV/AIDS as the leading cause of death from infectious diseases. The number of TB patients has never been higher and the growing proportion of drug-resistant TB is threatening control strategies both in the developing and developed world, Eastern Europe being a particularly worrying point in case.

The anTBiotic consortium aims to fuel the long-term TB clinical pipeline while immediately offering new options to clinicians when confronted with multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB.
More specifically, the proposed studies aim to:

• Establish the proof of concept of anti-TB efficacy in humans of a pioneering, first-in-class, low-dose GSK oxaborole clinical drug candidate;
• Identify a combination of β-lactam antibiotics suitable for the treatment of MDR TB orally or as a once daily intravenous or intramuscular application; and
• Incorporate the best β-lactam combination into an explorative salvage regimen for untreatable patients with extensively drug-resistant TB.

The anti-TB activity in humans will be established in a two-week EBA clinical studies that combine established (CFU, TTP) and new clinical markers (biomarkers, PET/CT).

These datasets will help ascertain anti-TB efficacy in humans and generate confidence on their validity in longer-term drug combination trials. A variety of modelling approaches to predict optimal dosing will be used.

Finally, we intend to use at least one of these novel anti-TB entities as part of a pioneering, non-controlled clinical trial in highly drug resistant subjects in Europe and South Africa. This final clinical intervention will hopefully be of immediate benefit to drug-resistant patients in the EU and elsewhere in addition to generating a strong precedent for further adoption worldwide.