Phage Display Scientist

CK Group are working in partnership with Nxera Pharma UK Limited (formerly Sosei Heptares) to recruit a lab-based Research Scientist/Senior Scientist position in the Protein Binder Discovery team based in Granta Park, Cambridge. Grade commensurate with experience level.

Company:

Nxera Pharma is a technology powered biopharma company, in pursuit of new specialty medicines to improve the lives of patients with unmet needs in Japan and globally, focused on therapeutic areas in inflammation diseases, neurology and immunology. 

The Role:

We are seeking an experienced phage display scientist to join the Protein Binders team, part of our Platform Technology division at Nxera Pharma. The successful candidate will use phage display expertise to identify protein binders against therapeutic membrane protein targets to enable structure determination and drug discovery efforts. The candidate would work in interdisciplinary teams in a project-centric fashion, aiming to accelerate the development of life-changing medicines.

The role will include the following responsibilities:

• Employing phage display technology to select protein binders against membrane protein targets 
• Screening and validating hits using high-throughput assays e.g. ELISA formats, BLI, cell binding assays
• Subcloning of plasmid constructs for expression and protein engineering of VHH frameworks
• Biophysical evaluation of VHH hits
• Sharing your expertise and insights across the team, project and department to help influence project success.

Requirements:

• PhD (or MSc/MRes with equivalent lab experience) in a relevant area of biology with at least 3-years experience carrying out phage display campaigns
• Theoretical and practical expertise in phage display technologies and selection techniques 
• Experience working with phage antibody libraries and preferably VHH display
• Strong and evidenced molecular biology proficiency 
• Demonstrable expertise in protein-protein interaction screening techniques
• Dynamic, analytical thinker with good problem-solving skills
• Have strong interpersonal skills and interact effectively with scientists across disciplines to generate timely and informative data.

Desirables:

• Experience of measuring affinity using either BLI or SPR
• Experience of affinity maturation
• Experience of library build (either affinity maturation or immunised, naïve or synthetic libraries)
• Experience in working with membrane proteins (in particular GPCRs)
• Computational expertise focussed around protein binder design would be highly advantageous

Apply:

It is essential that applicants hold entitlement to work in the UK. Please quote job reference 99230 in all correspondence.