The Immune Regulation group at the Deutsches Rheuma-ForschungsZentrum, a Leibniz institute, is looking for a highly motivated PhD student to investigate the regulatory functions of B cells during infectious and autoimmune diseases.

B cells can play various roles in immunity, and act either as pro- or anti-inflammatory cells. For instance, we showed that B cells controlled remission from disease in a pre-clinical autoimmune disease model of multiple sclerosis through provision of interleukin-10 (Nature Immunology, 2002). We also demonstrated that B cells could anti-microbial immune responses, and as a result markedly reduced resistance to infectious diseases (Immunity, 2010). Taken together, these data demonstrated that B cells could have strong impact on the course of autoimmune and infectious diseases. These unexpected discoveries offer novel opportunities for the treatment of the aforementioned pathologies. To pave the way for such translation work, the project will be to characterize further the B cell subpopulations involved in these functions using state-of-the-art technologies in genetics, and cellular biology.

The position is available on 1st March 2013.

The applicant should be highly motivated by Science, and speak English.
Please send your application with CV, and contact details of three references to:
Dr. Simon Fillatreau
DRFZ
Immune regulation group
Chariteplatz 1
10117 Berlin
Germany
E-mail: simonfillatreau@googlemail.com; fillatreau@drfz.de

arSCIENCE-JOBS-DE