A postdoctoral position of up to 3 years is available in the “Cancer Systems Pharmacology” team (Ballesta Lab) within the "Bioinformatics and Computational Systems Biology of Cancer" Unit (U900 INSERM, Mines ParisTech, Institut Curie) at Institut Curie.
The hosting structure
Institut Curie is a major player in the research and fight against cancer. It consists of a Hospital group and a Research Center of more than 1000 employees with a strong international representativeness. The objective of the Research Center is to develop fundamental research and use the produced knowledge to improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics of cancers as part of the continuum between basic research and innovation serving the patient.
Laboratory
The "Bioinformatics and Computational Systems Biology of Cancer" research unit is a very active and growing interdisciplinary department gathering bioinformaticians, biologists, physicians, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, and computer scientists. This postdoctoral project will be hosted in the “Cancer Systems Pharmacology” team which designs mathematical and statistical approaches for optimizing and personalizing anticancer treatments integrating multi-type preclinical and clinical data. The project is a collaboration with the “Statistical Methods for Precision Medicine” team (Latouche Lab) of the unit, the Cancer chronotherapy Paris-Saclay research unit (Hôpital Paul Brousse, Villejuif), and also involves several additional teams of clinicians.
The project
The postdoctorate candidate will focus on investigating the impact of the administration timing over the 24h span of cancer immunotherapy on treatment outcomes in patients. He/She will work in the framework of a collaborative project funded by INSERM through the “Mathématiques et Informatique contre le Cancer” call (MIC, 2024-2028) that aims to enhance the efficacy of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICI) through personalized administration timing. The circadian timing system has significant influence on the immune system1 and recent preclinical and retrospective cohort studies, including one of our group2, have highlighted an association between ICI timing of administration and treatment outcomes.
The candidate will perform analysis of cohorts of patients with cancers treated with ICI in order to decipher optimal ICI timing in terms of survival, antitumor response and toxicities, accounting for the patient characteristics (e.g. sex, age, performance status, …). In addition, he/she will develop novel statistical methods for analyzing the association of drug timing with patient survival and evaluate them on both synthetic and real-world data3,4. The candidate will further investigate the optimal design of prospective clinical trials addressing the relevance of personalized administration timing regarding patient outcomes. In connection with applied mathematicians of the team, he/she may further investigate the molecular determinants of such timing dependencies using mechanistic models based on ordinary differential equations.
Key responsibilities
o Conduct original research in the area of chrono-immunotherapy
o Develop and implement biostatistics methods using synthetic or real-world clinical data
o Interact with biologists and clinicians
o Publish scientific articles at international peer-review journals
o Present results internally and at international conferences
Skills/qualifications
o PhD degree in the area of biostatistics, or applied mathematics
o Significant computational/programming skills (e.g. R, MatLab, Python)
o Experience in working with survival analysis and clinical data.
o Strong interest in biological sciences and clinical research
o Strong communication and writing skills
Contract Information
The position is available immediately and opened until filled. The salary will be set according to the Institut Curie salary grids which include a bonus for bioinformaticians. Benefits include collective catering, reimbursement of transportation fees up to 70%, and supplementary health insurance. Institut Curie also offers numerous opportunities for training in both scientific and soft skills. The location of the position is on the site of Saint-Cloud (92) of Institut Curie.
Selection process
For initial consideration and more details about the scientific areas of research, send an e-mail including your CV, a brief statement of interest and contact information for two academic references to annabelle.ballesta@inserm.fr.
Institut Curie is an inclusive, equal opportunity employer and is dedicated to the highest standards of research integrity.
References
1. A Lévi, F., Okyar, A., Hadadi, E., F Innominato, P. & Ballesta, A. Circadian Regulation of Drug Responses: Toward Sex-Specific and Personalized Chronotherapy. Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol (2023) doi:10.1146/annurev-pharmtox-051920-095416.
2. Catozzi, S. et al. Early morning immune checkpoint blockade and overall survival of patients with metastatic cancer: An In-depth chronotherapeutic study. European Journal of Cancer 199, 113571 (2024).
3. Efird, J. T. Sinusoidal Cox Regression—A Rare Cancer Example. Cancer Inform 9, CIN.S6202 (2010).
4. Ramanathan, K. et al. Assessing Seasonality Variation with Harmonic Regression: Accommodations for Sharp Peaks. IJERPH 17, 1318 (2020).
