Job Academic Medical Center (AMC) - PhD student Anesthesiology

The PhD project is part of extensive research performed in our department directed at how the heart can be protected against cell death, such as occurring during by-pass operations or an acute myocardial infarction. In the past two decades the energy organelles of the cell, the mitochondria, have revealed their true nature in matter so life and death: Not only are they the power houses providing the necessary ATP for the high-energy demand of the heart, they are also the cellular dictators of cell death. The glycolytic enzyme hexokinase has appeared as one of the main gatekeepers of mitochondria-induced cell death. The interaction of hexokinase with mitochondria is one of the mechanisms why cancer cells are so difficult to kill. Our group has recently observed that mitochondrial hexokinase is also a very important player in cell death regulation within the heart. The current project is entitled “Mitochondrial hexokinase: Cardioprotective mechanisms and its first determination in the human heart”, and is funded by the Dutch heart foundation. It aims to elucidate the mechanism through which mitochondrial hexokinase offers protection against cardiac cell death, using isolated heart and in vivo animal studies, and will examine for the first time this mechanism in the human heart during clinical cardioprotective interventions in by-pass patients. The project is in close collaboration with the St Thomas Hospital in London.

We ask for an enthusiastic, optimistic and motivated PhD-student with a Masters degree in Medical Biology, Biology, Biochemistry or Medicine, with affinity for biochemical research, physiology, animal experimentation and/or research with patients.

We offer a fulltime appointment for the duration of 4 years, with salary starting at € 2086 for the first year and € 2673 gross per month in the last year.

Please contact dr. Coert Zuurbier for additional information.
Phone: 31 20 5665259/ Mail: c.j.zuurbier@amc.uva.nl