Research Associate - Oligonucleotide Immune Therapies

Advanced therapies based on modified mRNA and antisense oligonucleotides are transforming the treatment of cancer, neurodegenerative disease and infection, but their full potential will only be realised if they can be designed to be both powerful and safe. This post will develop new experimental systems to understand how these therapeutics activate innate immune pathways, and to use that knowledge to make them "safer by design". The successful candidate will work at the interface of RNA biology, immunology and toxicology, building models that identify when immune activation is harmful, when it can be harnessed for therapeutic benefit, and how these responses can be engineered in the next generation of nucleic acid medicines.