We offer a PhD position for biomedical doctoral students at the Center for Thrombosis and Hemostasis (University Medical Center Mainz, Germany) and the Center for CardioVascular and Nutrition research (C2VN at Aix-Marseille Université, France). As this project is part of the MSCA ITN “Thrombo-Inflammation in Cardiovascular Disease” (TICARDIO), you will be trained in an international, interdisciplinary joint doctoral degree program striving to train the next generation of biomedical researchers. Your PhD project will be supervised by Prof. Dr. Wolfram Ruf in Mainz and by Prof. Dr. Francoise Dignat-George in Marseille. Furthermore, a research stay at BioCytex (Marseille, France, Dr. Philippe Poncelet) offers you the opportunity to get insights into research in the industry.

• You will be working within our international group of > 30 researchers;
• You will be involved in cutting-edge research in an interdisciplinary environment;
• You will conduct your research at two research locations and the site of an industry partner;
• You will receive excellent network-wide and local training with conference participation;
• You will receive a 36 months contract with all national social security (and family allowance, if applicable) at the University Medical Center Mainz;
• You will obtain a joint doctoral degree from Universities of Mainz and Marseille, if all requirements are fulfilled. 

• You have a Master degree (or equivalent) in biomedical sciences or a similar field;
• You are in the first four years of your research career and do not hold a doctoral degree;
• You must not have resided in Germany for more than 12 months in the 3 years prior to the recruitment;
• Ideally, you have experience in protein biochemistry and/or cell and molecular biology; experience with flow cytometry is desirable. 

Fixed-term contract: 36 months.

This project offers good conditions of employment. 

The Thrombo-inflammation in cardiovascular disease (TICARDIO)

Project 6
Tissue factor (TF) is a major driver of thrombosis and inflammation. How TF expressed by blood and vessel wall cells, and in particular when released via extracellular vesicles (EV), contributes to vascular inflammation remains to be elucidated. We hypothesize that the source of EV and their release mechanism determine the interactions of EV with blood cells and vessel wall in thrombotic inflammation.

This project aims to understand how the release mechanisms generating EV from blood (monocytes) and vessel wall cells determine the protein and lipid compositions of EV. You will study how these properties of EV influence the delivery of cargo and impact interactions with blood cells and the endothelium in thrombo-inflammation. You will be trained in cell biology and omics approaches and develop imaging techniques for the visualization of EV-associated proteins. You will investigate the interactions of EV with vascular cells and analyze TF-bearing- EV initiate and disseminate intravascular coagulation processes.

The ultimate goal is to develop new diagnostic approaches for measuring functional activities of EV (e.g high sensitivity TF assays) and develop novel methods for imaging EV interactions with vessel wall cells using microfluidic devices in vitro and established thrombosis models in vivo. The long- term perspective of this project is a better definition of the roles of EV in thrombosis and determine their potential to elicit inflammatory cell signaling.