SCIENCE-JOBS-DE

PhD student position - Enzymatic isotope-labeling of O-glycans for improved tumor biomarker analysis (Vienna, Austria)

This project is offered within the framework of the International PhD Program „Biomolecular Technology of Proteins – BioToP† at BOKU - University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria.

Project description

The analysis of O-glycosylated proteins is a hot topic in biopharmaceutical production. Furthermore it has become clear that several types of cancer cells (e.g. lung, ovarian, breast, colon, leukemia) exhibit an O-glycan profile that differs from normal tissue. A well known alteration is the increased occurrence of relatively small oligosaccharides.
The analysis of these very small compounds is difficult as they are not amenable to the otherwise highly efficient enrichment and purification procedure using porous graphitic carbon (PGC) cartridges. If O-glycan biomarkers shall become useful for diagnosis, surgery follow-up or prediction of disease course, a reliable methodology for their analysis is indispensable.

The project wants to reach two goals:
(1) Elaboration of a method that allows the unbiased quantitative analysis of the very small tumor-associated glycans Tn- and sialyl-Tn antigen.
(2) Generation of internal reference substances that assure correct relative quantitation.

These two efforts shall lead to an improved LC-MS based method for analysis of the O-glycan pattern from cultured cells, urine, saliva or biopsy samples. The remedy proposed here is to elongate the cancer-typical stubs by recombinant glycosyltransferase(s) in order to make them large and thus adherent to PGC.

Enzymatic elongation and isotope-labeling will be performed with recombinantly produced galactosyl- and sialyl-transferases. The separation of the thus labeled and marked O-glycans will be performed by the established isomer-specific technique of PGC-LC with MS/MS detection and analysis.

For more detailed information about the project and the PhD program BioToP please visit http://biotop.boku.ac.at


Application

Applicants must hold a master degree and should have experience in recombinant protein expression and interest in the use of advanced software and data handling.


Please note: The PhD Program BioToP will only consider applications that are submitted using the official BioToP application forms. No other forms of applications will be accepted.

For application guidelines and download of forms please visit http://biotop.boku.ac.at.

Application Deadline: 12.08.2015
Christa Jakopitsch
biotop@boku.ac.at
BOKU - University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Vienna, Austria