Post-Doctoral fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism

Fellowship: A 2-year position (with possibility of 1-year extension) is available for a postdoctoral scientist to conduct a research project in endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition. Fellowship starts from approximately 2920 /month after tax. (+ transport)

Project: Study of the cross-talk between pancreatic islet cells using live-cell imaging, functional in vivo and in vitro tests, and omics approaches: implications for diabetes.

The endocrine pancreas plays a key role in glucose homeostasis. It is organized in islets mainly composed of beta, alpha- and delta-cells, secreting, respectively, insulin, glucagon and somatostatin. Insulin is the major hypoglycemic hormone whereas glucagon is hyperglycemic. Somatostatin potently inhibits the secretion of both insulin and glucagon. Diabetes is characterized by an impaired glucose homeostasis and results from a deficit in insulin which is absolute in type 1 diabetes (due to beta-cell destruction) or relative in type 2 diabetes (as a result of decreased beta-cell mass and insulin resistance). Diabetes is also characterized by a defective glucagon secretion (hypersecretion and altered response to hypoglycemia) of unknown origin. All cell types of the islets influence each other, but the nature of these heterologous interactions is still poorly understood. The objectives of the project are to study he cross-talk between pancreatic islet cells, using various approaches, from the gene to the cell and to the whole organism in healthy states and in diabetes. One goal will be to identify new therapeutic targets to help to normalize glucose homeostasis in diabetes. Studies will be performed on both human and mouse tissue.

Some techniques used in the lab: Cell culture, Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting (FACS), gene expression analysis, secretion assays, live cell imaging, conventional and confocal fluorescence microscopy, patch-clamp, cloning and adenovirus construction, transgenic mouse models, ...

Publications of the team: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=gilon+P&sort=pubdate

Environment: Our lab is composed of ~15 researchers including PhD students and post-docs from various nationalities. The lab is located in a pleasant area in Brussels.

Procedure: The applicant should send, in a single PDF file, to the email address below (i) a motivation letter, (ii) a detailed curriculum vitae mentioning the list of articles with the names of authors as published (separating the lists of original articles, reviews and abstracts) + the impact factor of the Journals, a phone number, an e.mail address, the birthdate, photo, copies of relevant university degrees + certificate of experimentation on laboratory animals, and (iii) names, addresses, e.mail addresses and phone numbers of at least 2 (ideally 3) persons of reference.

To Dr. P. Gilon

patrick.gilon@uclouvain.be