LIH is part of a doctoral research and training programme on brain tumours supported by European Commission's Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Programme. The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) is leading the international team of scientists on a four-year project named GLIOTRAIN launched in September 2017 that aims to train the next generation of brain cancer researchers.

GLIOTRAIN will focus on Glioblastoma, the most frequent, aggressive and lethal of all brain tumours. Glioblastoma has a universally fatal prognosis with 85% of patients dying within two years. The project will exploit the intractability of Glioblastoma to address European biomedical research training needs. Fifteen new PhD candidates will be trained across the fields of tumour biology, medical oncology, computational biology, genomics, cancer drug delivery and immunotherapy. Two of them will do their PhD projects in Luxembourg, one at the NorLux Neuro-Oncology Laboratory at LIH’s Department of Oncology, the other at ITTM Solutions, a spin-off of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg. Collaborations between both entities are planned.

GLIOTRAIN, which received funding of almost 3.9 million Euros, is led by Prof Annette Byrne, RCSI Department of Physiology and Medical Physics & RCSI Centre for Systems Medicine. ‘New treatment options for glioblastoma patients and effective precision medicine therapies are urgently required’, says Prof Byrne. ‘With GLIOTRAIN we hope to identify novel therapeutic strategies, while implementing state of the art genomics and systems biomedicine approaches to unravel disease resistance mechanisms. Our consortium brings together leading European and international academics, clinicians, private sector and not-for-profit partners to achieve this goal’, she emphasises. Prof. Simone Niclou, Head of the NorLux Neuro-Oncology Laboratory at LIH’s Department of Oncology comments: ‘GLIOTRAIN will allow doctoral candidates to benefit from excellent training conditions within an international consortium and get in contact with both the academic and the industry work environment.’

The project includes major partners across Europe, including collaborators in Ireland (Cancer Trials Ireland); Germany (University of Stuttgart, Hannover Medical School, GeneXplain, Insilico Biotechnoloy, Yumab); Luxembourg (LIH, ITTM Solutions); Belgium (VIB, University of Leuven, Oncurious, Agilent Technologies); France (ICM Brain and Spinal Institute Paris, Bristol Myers Squibb, CarThera); Netherlands (Erasmus Medical Centre, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Mimetas, Pepscope)  and the United Kingdom (International Brain Tumour Alliance), as well as a partner in the United States (Champions Oncology).  

All PhD positions for GLIOTRAIN: https://www.euraxess.ie/jobs/246941

PhD position at LIH: https://www.lih.lu/jobs/detail/phd-student-in-glioblastoma-research-sn0917-12687