Scientist, Viral Immunology

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What if…you could join an organization that creates, resources, and builds life sciences companies that invent breakthrough technologies in order to transform health care and sustainability?

Apriori Bio is an early-stage biotechnology company with an ambitious and exciting mission: to lay the foundation for Global Pathogen Shield™ protective interventions that that can neutralize a wide range of the most dangerous and rapidly evolving infectious pathogen threats. The company is developing a revolutionary approach to this challenge and recruiting a team of top-tier scientists to build what it believes will be a powerful, first-in-category R&D platform.

Apriori Bio is a product of Flagship Pioneering’s venture creation engine, which has also given rise to companies such as Moderna Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRNA), Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Indigo Agriculture. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures. In 2021, Flagship Pioneering was ranked 12th globally on Fortune’s “Change the World” list, an annual ranking of companies that have made a positive social and environmental impact through activities that are part of their core business strategies.

Position Summary:

This Scientist / Senior Scientist position will join a rapidly growing team to design and characterize novel antigens and evaluate subsequent vaccine responses. The successful candidate will play a key role in formulating and executing on a science & technology strategy that will allow the company to deliver against its near- and longer-term goals.  The successful candidate will have expertise in immunogen design, establishing immunoassays to characterize antigens and their immunogenicity in vitro and ex vivo, and evaluating serological responses after vaccination. Additionally, this candidate will collaborate with other experimental and computational scientists to interpret their results in the context of additional, state-of-the-art immune profiling datasets. This individual will join an interdisciplinary and collaborative team at the interface of immunology, virology, functional genomics, and vaccine design, and should be comfortable communicating and working with diverse backgrounds in a fast-paced startup environment.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Utilize high-dimensional datasets and screening platforms to help guide antigen engineering campaigns
  • Design and execute experiments to characterize novel vaccine antigens (delivered via different potential modalities – e.g. mRNA, recombinant protein) in vitro
  • Evaluate and execute in vitro and ex vivo approaches to characterize vaccine immunogenicity
  • Collaborate with leadership and other scientists to manage vaccination experiments at external CROs
  • Establish and utilize serological immunoassays – including traditional epitope mapping approaches – to characterize vaccine responses in animal models
  • Collaborate with other teams to interpret immunogenicity in context of novel, next-generation immune monitoring tools
  • Help formulate and articulate the company’s science & technology strategy, and monitor progress toward key strategic goals on an ongoing basis
  • Build an infrastructure of laboratory protocols, tools, and systems to enable immunological studies
  • Train and mentor research associates
  • Communicate insights and conclusions to colleagues in the scientific and leadership teams

Basic Qualifications:

  • Ph.D. plus 0-4+ years of experience in immunology, bioengineering, or a related field
  • Strong skills in setting up diverse immunoassays from scratch (e.g. flow cytometry, ELISA, neutralization assays, Luminex, ELISPOT, etc)
  • Experience in antigenic characterization of immunogens (mRNA-delivered and others)
  • Experience in evaluating vaccine immunogenicity in vitro/ex vivo and/or evaluating serological responses
  • Experience in immunogen design, immune profiling, and/or protein engineering

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience with vaccine design against highly variable viruses and/or structure-based or epitope-focused vaccine design
  • Experience with antibody characterization, immune profiling, protein engineering, or structural modeling
 
 
Flagship Pioneering and our ecosystem companies are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.
 
Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.