The Department of Infectious Diseases brings together researchers and students to understand the pathogenic mechanisms, diagnosis and treatment of human infections.

 

Our research bridges our strengths in laboratory-based enquiry using molecular genetics, metagenomics, biochemistry, cell biology, bioinformatics and structural biology, with rich clinical resources in microbiology, virology, sexually transmitted diseases and clinical trials.

 

A major thread running through our research is understanding how viruses and bacteria interact with and subvert their human hosts to replicate and transmit, and how infection- and vaccine-induced immunity protects us in the face of new and ever-evolving pathogens.

 

The Wanford Group, led by Dr Joseph Wanford, is a molecular microbiology and infectious diseases research group based within the Department of Infectious Diseases at King’s College London, specialising the pathogenesis of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

The bacterial pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae (Kp) is a major antibiotic-resistant pathogen responsible for high levels of mortality worldwide. Development of novel therapies and preventative vaccines is hampered by an incomplete understanding of the pathogenesis of Kp infection. The extracellular polysaccharide capsule is a major Kp virulence determinant, but the molecular regulation of its expression during infection remains poorly understood. The Wanford group uses comparative genomics, molecular genetics and infection biology techniques to understand how Kp regulates expression of the capsule to transition between states of asymptomatic colonisation and invasive disease.

 

We seek a Research Assistant to support a multidisciplinary research program investigating regulatory pathways controlling capsule production and their impact on host-pathogen interactions. The successful candidate will work closely with PDRAs to support their projects. The candidate will also develop their own independent project applying genetic manipulation techniques to construct deletion mutants in Kp, before characterising extracellular polysaccharides using biochemical methods. The candidate will further employ in vitro tissue culture systems, ex vivo assays with human serum samples (HTA certification required), and in vivo models to study the dynamics of infection.

 

The successful candidate will be supported in applications for PhD studentships during the post.

 

This role will be held on a full-time basis (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract for 24 months, starting no earlier than the 1st October 2025.