PhD student positions in the group-Translational Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery

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label Burse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:00 history_edu Maria Dumitru
Several PhD student positions are available in the group Translational Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery headed by Prof. Tad Holak at the Jagiellonian University, Krakw, Poland. The project Targeting the ubiquitin-proteosome system and ubiquitin-like protein conjugation pathways for non-genotoxic therapy of cancer will be conducted within the TEAM programme, funded by the Foundation for Polish Science within the EU Innovative Economy Operational Programme 2012-2015.

The overall aim of the project is to determine structural attributes and to develop small-molecule compounds for new, emerging, cancer-related protein-protein interactions in the ubiquitin-proteasome system. We use nuclear magnetic resonance and X-ray crystallography techniques to structurally characterize protein-protein interactions (PPI) and to develop small-molecule inhibitors for these PPIs.

One of the proteins studied by us is the tumour suppressor p53 protein, "the guardian of the genome". p53 has an overarching role in protecting the organism from cancer. In order to escape the safeguard system mediated by p53, all human cancers have compromised the effectiveness of the p53 pathway. The restoration of the impaired function of the single gene, p53, offers a fundamentally new avenue for anticancer therapy across a broad spectrum of cancers (Popowicz et al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 50, 2680-2688, 2011; Mishra et al., Nature, 474, 173-178, 2011).