Make your mark for patients
We are looking for a Group Leader Neuroinflammation who is agile, passionate and innovative to join us in our In-Vitro Target Discovery team based in Braine, Belgium.
About the role
We are searching for an established, experienced Neuroimmunologist to lead the In-Vitro Target Discovery Team within the Neuroinflammation focus area at UCB. The ideal candidate will have an in-depth knowledge of microglia and peripheral immune involvement in neurodegeneration as evidenced by a strong publication record and recognition within the field of neuroinflammation/neuroimmunology.
Who you’ll work with
You will work closely with other teams within Neuroinflammation and align with key stakeholders across UCB’s research sites, to define experimental approaches, specific studies, and priorities. You will also manage external collaborations with academic labs, CROs and biotech partners, and will represent the Neuroinflammation team by proposing new drug targets and providing updates on projects to UCB leadership/governance.
What you’ll do
1. Utilising strong leadership, interpersonal and advanced communication skills, you will lead a team of 4-5 in-vitro scientists in the process of target identification, validation, and driving the biology strategy from hit ID to candidate selection.
2. You will primarily be tasked with understanding the field, generating novel therapeutic targets to be investigated by the team, coordinate/prioritize activities together with your team.
3. Act as the neuroinflammation biology representative to the various neuroinflammation pre-clinical projects, and drive target ID and validation initiatives together with internal and external collaborators.
4. You will be expected to have some hands-on involvement in experimental work, although this will primarily be a group leader and project management role.
Interested? For this role we’re looking for the following education, experience and skills.
5. The primary requirement is an exhaustive knowledge of the field of microglia and the wider neuroinflammation field.
6. In-depth expertise in handling, establishing/troubleshooting functional assays utilizing human or non-human primate blood and bone marrow-derived immune cells, including PBMCs, monocytes, monocyte-derived macrophages.
7. Expertise in gene editing, overexpression or knockdown technologies combined with high throughput/high content imaging approaches.
8. In-depth experience with immune phenotyping (flow/mass cytometry) and cell sorting technologies is a must.
9. Experience with murine cell lines, bone marrow-derived macrophages and microglia as well as knowledge of rodent models of autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease is desirable.
10. Experience with iPSC-derived systems (both monoculture and co-culture) including microglial and neuronal functional assays is highly desired.
Are you ready to ‘go beyond’ to create value and make your mark for patients? If this sounds like you, then we would love to hear from you!