Senior Bioinformatician

About the role:

The goal of the CRUK National Biomarker Centre (NBC), is to develop, validate, and implement biomarkers that facilitate the optimisation of cancer patient treatment. In this regard, the NBC is an acknowledged world leader in the study of minimally invasive biomarkers, or liquid biopsies, for improving cancer management. Our biomarker research integrates clinical, molecular and computational science into a highly convergent programme. Advanced computational biology is critical to the biomarker agenda.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Bioinformatician to join the NBC. You will work alongside a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, biologists, engineers, and computational scientists to analyse genomic, epigenomic and transcriptomic data arising from patient blood samples; including cfDNA, cfRNA and circulating tumour cells. The primary focus will be to develop and apply a wide range of computational tools to sequencing data from liquid biopsy to develop and validate novel biomarkers that help better characterise patient tumours.

About you:

You will have a Degree in computational biology/bioinformatics, or related discipline (or equivalent relevant experience) plus significant data analysis experience. Alternatively, you will have a postgraduate degree related to cancer biology with demonstrable data analysis experience.

You will have relevant experience in writing code (preferably with R/Bioconductor and/or Python), be able to work comfortably on the Linux command line and have a grasp of the statistical approaches used to analyse genome-wide datasets. An understanding of liquid biopsies, cancer genomics, and/or cancer biology are desirable, as is an understanding of bioinformatics pipelines (e.g. Nextflow). You will have strong communication skills and a desire to work collaboratively with scientists from other disciplines. Experience of multidisciplinary teamwork would be beneficial.

This role would be suitable for a specialist in data analysis wishing to expand upon their cancer related knowledge, or a cancer bench scientist transitioning into a career in computational analysis.

Why choose Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre?
The Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre () is a leading and highly specialised translational research centre within The University of Manchester (), core funded by Cancer Research UK (), the largest independent cancer research organisation in the world.

Our Centre discovers, develops, validates and qualifies biomarkers in clinical studies and trials that detect cancer earlier and predict and monitor therapy responses to support optimised treatment of patients with cancer. Our advanced research programmes, agnostic to cancer type, develop biomarkers in tissue and less invasive clinical samples such as blood (liquid biopsy) with sophisticated bioinformatic and artificial intelligence solutions for multi-modal laboratory and clinical biomarker data analysis and interpretation. Our preclinical programmes focus on development of pharmacodynamic biomarker and evaluation the efficacy of novel therapeutics in patient derived models. As a bridge between discovery science and clinical research, we are highly collaborative across Manchester, nationally and internationally.