Several postdoctoral fellow positions are immediately available as part of a recently funded NIH Challenge Grant. The grant focuses on the development of a new cell-based strategy for regenerative medicine and gene therapy which depends upon the ability to genetically engineer hematopoietic stem cells or other cell populations to be capable of efficient fusion to cells within organs and tissues after their transplantation in vivo. In vivo studies will focus on a determination of the range of tissues and organs that are amenable to cell fusion after local or systemic delivery of different types of donor cells. In addition to determining the efficiency of nuclear transfer to muscle and other tissues and organs, the capacity of donor nuclei derived from different cell types to provide for the expression of therapeutic gene products, and the immunological consequences of the transplantation of allogeneic and xenogeneic cells, will be determined. A particularly important goal of the in vivo studies will be to understand how interactions between donor and recipient nuclei affect the extent of reprogramming and/or maintenance of the differentiated phenotype of the donor and recipient nuclei in different tissues. Of specific interest is whether in vivo nuclear fusion can be employed to reprogram cells in the pancreas or liver to the islet phenotype, and/or to enable the preservation of the specialized differentiated functions of specific cells, such as insulin or antibody secreting cells via introduction of nuclei from those specialized cells into muscle or other tissues.

To apply, email a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statement of research experience and career goals, and contact information for three references addressed to Dr Richard Mulligan at: mulligan@receptor.med.harvard.edu.
Candidates with advanced expertise in immunology, diabetes research, or muscle transplantation are particularly encouraged to apply