MSCA-PF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health

Professor Pilar Requena, from the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health  at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) in 2023 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (for more information about the 2023 call, please consult:(http://sl.ugr.es/0d7F)

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR) was founded in 1531 and is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 51,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and almost 3,000 members of staff, the UGR offers over 90 undergraduate degrees, 160 master’s degrees (8 of which are international double degrees) and 28 doctoral programmes via its 124 departments and nearly 50 centers. Accordingly, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the institution’s commitment to continuously improving its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also internationally renowned for its excellence in diverse research fields and ranked among the top Spanish universities in a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, and international funding.

The UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The 2022 edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the 2-5 highest ranked universities in Spain (http://sl.ugr.es/0d7D), reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. The UGR stands out in the specialties of Library & Information Science (position 38); Food Science & Technology (30) and Hospitality & Tourism Management (51-75), according to the latest edition of this prestigious ranking by specialties (http://sl.ugr.es/0bSp). A little lower in the ranking, the UGR also stands out in Mathematics (76-100).

Additionally, the UGR has 9 researchers who are at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list (http://sl.ugr.es/0d7E), most of these related to the area of Computer Science. It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 42th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, the University of Granada is firmly committed to its participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, the UGR obtained a total 120 projects with a total funding of around 29,4 million euros.  For the current Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, the UGR has obtained 38 projects, so far, with total funding around 11 € million.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

The University of Granada is an institution with 3621 academic and research stuff researchers, >500 research groups and >1500 research lines. These research lines cover all the fields, from Art and History to Engineering, Science and Biomedicine. The research is mainly performed in the department and research centre laboratories, and so would be the case for the applicant, who would work at the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Nevertheless, in addition to that, the UGR has a core Centre for Scientific Instrumentation (CIC) whose equipment is distributed across the several campuses.

The Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health has 14 full-time professors and between 10-15 PhD students. There are several lines of research within the department passing through the research line of this proposal, i.e., epidemiology and prevention of communicable diseases, from epidemiology of cancer and it’s determinants to epidemiology of road traffic injuries. Besides, the members of the department, and specifically the supervisor of this proposal, have research collaborations with other national and international institutions, e.g. ISGlobal (Barcelona, Spain) and The University of Melbourne (Australia).

Project description:

Although the clinical trials of the approved anti-COVID-19 vaccines showed very good efficacy data against the initial variant, there are doubts about the protection of the vaccines against new variants of SARS-CoV-2 and about the duration of immunity induced by them. In an initial study with health personnel vaccinated with BNT162b2 (Cominarty®, Pfizer/BioNtech) followed up to 6 months post-vaccination and carried out by our group, it was observed that, although all vaccinated individuals developed a neutralizing antibody response against the first variants of SARS-CoV-2 (wild and alpha-British), antibody levels varied widely among different individuals and neutralizing antibodies to a later variant (beta-South African) were not detected in all of them. It is a priority to characterize the long-term immune response to vaccination (2 years after vaccination), the susceptibility of those vaccinated to reinfection, as well as the determinants and mechanisms associated with a lower immune response or a potential loss of immunity that allow prioritizing individuals for booster doses of vaccine.

Objectives:

1) To analyze the antibody levels (total and neutralizing antibody titers) after vaccination with BNT162b2, in a cohort followed for 2 years.

2) Analyze the post-vaccination COVID-19 infection rate and its relationship with antibody levels.

3) Analyze the impact of various baseline determinants on antibody levels, namely: socio-demographic factors, diet, tobacco and alcohol consumption, prevalent diseases at the time of vaccination, and exposure to contaminants that disrupt the immune system.

4) Characterize the post-vaccination cytokine profile in relation to antibody titers.

Research Area:

☒ Life Sciences (LIFE)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Pilar Requena (prequena@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)