Then we’ve got what you are looking for.

We are recruiting a post-doctoral researcher here at KTH, in beautiful Stockholm (Sweden), to work on a mucus engineering approach to address the challenge of mucosal dryness. We offer a stimulating environment and a rich scientific experience to help you develop personally and professionally. By joining us, you will find a research group that is:

• Dynamic. A healthy group size of 2 postdocs, 2 PhD students, and master students excited about the work we do!
• Ambitious. Developing the mucus engineering research niche. High risk, high reward!
• International. Greek, German, Swedish, Chinese, and French lab members… In Sweden.
• Translational. We do basic science and apply our knowledge to build technologies that can help.
• Open. We believe science should be open. We use modern digital tools to manage our work and we encourage internal and external open communication.

You will be working on mucosal dryness, a distressing condition for the millions of individuals suffering from dry eye, dry mouth, and vaginal dryness. Despite hundreds of products available for treating these conditions, they are limited in their effectiveness. For instance eye drops needed to be applied tens or twenty times a day. There can be many different underlying causes and mechanisms for mucosal dryness. But a common denominator is the dehydrated mucus gel that covers our epithelium and which is the healthy state is exceptionally good at hydrating and lubricating these surfaces.

The approach taken by current products is to add a polymers solution with high viscosity to the dry mucosal surfaces with the aim to form an artificial hydrated polymer layer. These provide some relief but do not mimic the natural hydration and lubrication of mucus and the polymers are easily washed away.

In our group, we have been exploring a “mucus engineering” approach. We see the mucus gel as a materials that we can engineers and enhance via innovative mucus-modifying molecules. For instance, we have seen encouraging results using lectins/PEG conjugate molecules that were able to recover the hydration and lubrication of dehydrated mucin layers (paper in open access here).

Another mucus engineering approach in the lab aims to reinforce the mucus barrier properties, which we are now applying to contraception.

The position is funded by a Novo Nordisk foundation exploratory pre-seed grant we were awarded. Novo Nordisk and its foundations have excellent track records of investment in early-stage groundbreaking scientific discoveries. Depending on the outcome of the research followup investments and grants are possible.

To apply, go to the job announcement on the KTH website and click apply (deadline is February 17th). Make sure you explain your reasons to apply in a cover letter!