Senior Scientist - Phage Display

The Role:

We are searching for 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 will work in interdisciplinary teams in a project-centric fashion, with the aim of accelerating 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, insights, and ideas with the team, project, and department to positively influence project success.

Requirements:

• PhD (or MSc/MRes with equivalent lab experience) in a relevant area of biology with demonstrable industry 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
• Analytical thinker with good problem-solving skills
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to interact effectively with scientists across disciplines to generate timely and informative data.

Desirable Experience:

• Measuring affinity using either BLI or SPR
• Affinity maturation
• Library build (either affinity maturation or immunised, naïve or synthetic libraries)
• Working with membrane proteins (in particular GPCRs)
• Having computational expertise in protein binder design would be extremely beneficial.

Fantastic benefits on offer include:

• State-of-the-art R&D centre located in the heart of the Cambridge science cluster.
• Competitive compensation package including discretionary bonuses.
• 25 days annual leave in addition to public holidays.
• Employer contribution to pension.
• Private Medical Insurance and a cash plan for dental and optical reimbursement.
• Health and wellbeing benefits including a subsidised individual gym membership.
• Income protection to cover long-term absences due to ill health.
• Group Death in Service equal to 4x basic annual salary.

About Us

Nxera Pharma (formerly Sosei Heptares) is a technology powered biopharma company, in pursuit of new speciality medicines to improve the lives of patients with unmet needs globally.

Nxera employs over 350 talented people at key locations in Tokyo and Osaka (Japan), London and Cambridge (UK), Basel (Switzerland) and Seoul (South Korea) and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (ticker: 4565).

In addition to several products being commercialized in Japan, we are advancing an extensive pipeline of over 30 active programs from discovery through to late clinical stage internally and in partnership with leading pharma and biotech companies including Lilly, GSK, AbbVie, Verily, Neurocrine, Takeda, Genentech/Roche, Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Medicxi, Aditum Bio.

This pipeline is focused on addressing major unmet needs in some of the fastest-growing areas of medicine across CNS, GI and immunology, metabolic disorders and rare diseases, and leverages the power of our unique and industry leading GPCR-targeted structure-based drug discovery “NxWave” platform to provide a sustainable source of best- or first-in-class candidates.

In Cambridge UK, we have built outstanding capabilities across our platform, discovery and translational medicine teams, to advance multiple programs from pre-clinical through to early clinical development.

In Tokyo, our expert teams are dedicated to late-stage development (Ph 2/3) and innovative commercialization/ go-to-market approaches.

Our Mission

To accelerate the development of life-changing medicines, by investing in science and technology

Our Vision

To lead the next era of medicine. From Japan, for Japan, and the world.

Our Values

• Patients, carers, families, and physicians come first
• Innovation and teamwork inspire success
• Focus on top priorities where we can make a difference
• Speed and agility of decision-making
• Operational excellence

We are passionate about improving the quality of life and health of people around the world and believe we can achieve our mission through providing a supportive, motivational, and empowering environment for employees.

We are proud to offer a collaborative, diverse and inclusive working environment that considers your individual needs and believes in maintaining a sustainable work-life balance.

You will be welcomed by a team of colleagues with decades of accumulated experience in their areas of expertise, happy to help you develop your own skills in a highly collaborative environment and who are keen to provide guidance and support in your personal and career development plans.

For more information, please visit:- www.nxera.life

How to apply? Please send your CV and Cover letter to Sav Bassi at sav.bassi@ext.nxera.life.

Note to Agencies: We have a preferred supplier whom we will use if needed; please do not contact us about this role.