Summary

Dr. Alexandra Stevens at Texas Children's Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine is seeking a research assistant for work in mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance for pediatric hematologic malignancies, primarily acute myeloid leukemia. Our laboratory goals are to identify mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance and to harness that knowledge to develop and evaluate novel treatments for childhood hematologic malignancies. We focus primarily on understanding chemotherapy resistance in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia, a childhood cancer with poor survival despite intensive and toxic treatments.  Current projects are focused on evaluation of novel agents and on identifying therapeutically relevant characteristics of leukemia initiating cells. 

   
The successful applicant for this position will be a motivated, organized, and team-oriented individual who is comfortable working with mice to model pediatric hematologic malignancies. 
 

Job Duties

• Prepares and conducts laboratory research experiments - for example - conduct flow cytometry and compensation (with training), extraction of RNA, thawing of irreplaceable primary patient samples (after training), produces reliable consistent data. and analyzes data. 
• Conducts literature searches related to experiment conduct and presents and records data in order to support research related decision making. 
• Accurately reports and documents all results of experiments. 
• Constant evaluation of the success of experiments to improve lab related processes. 
• Orders supplies as needed. Performs additional duties as related to accomplishing goals of the lab as needed.
• Interfaces with clinical providers - nurses, doctors.  
• Works with members of the clinical research team. 
• Chemoresitance evaluations, murine (in vivo) experiments, assays evaluating metabolic changes within blasts. This will be designing new protocols – not just conducting experiments that we have already developed protocols 
   

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a Basic Science or a related field. 
• Three years of relevant experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Masters Degree in Basic Science. 
• 3+ years of related experience.
• Prior experience in flow cytometry, apoptosis assays, qPCR, immunoblotting/immunochemistry, kinase and phosphatase assays, cell cycle analysis, and murine models of disease are helpful but not required. 
• Excellent knowledge of English, both oral and written, is required.
• Must have several years of experience managing a lab and designing experiments