Our laboratory is located at Lady Davis Institute, Jewish General Hospital, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada. Dr Jian Hui  Wu is an Associate Professor, Departments of Oncology and Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University. Dr Wu’s laboratory is interested in identification and development of novel small-molecule inhibitors against cancer targets. 

Our laboratory has three components: 1) Structure-based drug design; 2) Medicinal Chemistry; and 3) Biological assays. Dr Wu’s laboratory has discovered novel small-molecule inhibitors for a series of important drug targets for cancer, such as androgen receptor (AR), AR-v7 and GATA2 (prostate cancer),as well as Keap1/Nrf2 (lung cancer and others), RanGTPase (ovarian cancer and triple-negative breast cancer), KRAS G12D and G12V mutants (pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer), etc.  

One critical issue in the early stage of drug discovery is how to develop robust screening layers to evaluate compounds. From assay layer 1, 2, 3, 4, etc, we select candidate compounds for next assay layer by certain criteria. By the end, compounds from the last assay layer are expected to be potent and highly selective. 

This might sound like a routine work, but poor setup of the assays will quickly lead project to the dead end. A great challenge is how to design assays to evaluate to what degree the activity of compounds in cancer cell lines/xenografts of tumor is due to inhibition of the intended target.

As a key member of our team, the candidate is expected to establish and perform in vitro assays to evaluate a series of compounds for their activities against the intended targets and the impact on relevant cancer cells. Promising compounds will be evaluated for the in vivo efficacy in mice. In collaboration with several leading experts in cancer biology, we have established a series of assay layers for various cancer targets. The candidate is expected to improve these assay layers and establish new ones as needed. The candidate will obtain skills and expertise on drug discovery and have opportunity to learn structure-based drug design.  

The Candidate must have Ph.D. in molecular biology, which was obtained recently. Candidate should have experience in working on projects in cancer. We are looking for a candidate who is ambitious and interested in the early phase of drug discovery.  

 Please send your CV and cover letter by email to Dr Wu (Jian.h.wu@mcgill.ca)