Overview In this role you will advance antibody discovery campaigns within the Antibody Discovery Collaborative Centre, partnering with cross-functional teams to deliver lead candidates. You will design and optimize display-based and ML-enhanced workflows, mine antibody pools with NGS, and support protein sciences to enable scalable antibody production. Your work will directly contribute to St. Jude's mission to save children's lives through innovative biologics discovery and development.
Responsibilities- Design and optimize antibody discovery workflows across display platforms (phage, yeast, mammalian) and build high-diversity libraries
- Apply in-vitro display methods for sequence discovery and manage multiple screening arms for antigens
- Use NGS to mine antibody pools for sequence discovery and refine lead candidates
- Develop high-throughput mammalian production platforms for recombinant antibodies and other biologics
- Construct generation for antibody expression and perform plasmid preparation for transfection
- Establish scalable transient and stable expression in CHO/HEK293 and other mammalian systems; purify with AKTA systems
- Perform quality assessments (ELN data capture, polyreactivity ELISA, CE-SDS, SEC-MALS, DSF) and conduct early-stage molecular characterization
- Collaborate with discovery platforms to support molecular biology workflows and epitope-based analyses; merge cryo-EM insights when available
- Maintain and utilize high-throughput purification and protein analysis pipelines (Kingfisher, HPLC-SEC) and incorporate bioinformatic tools for antibody repertoire analysis
Key requirements- Eight years of relevant experience with a Master's degree, or three years with a PhD, or six years with a Master's degree, as stated
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant scientific area
- Experience in antibody discovery or protein engineering/biologics expression and validation
- Proven ability to design discovery workflows and deliver lead antibody candidates
- Experience with display technologies (phage, yeast, mammalian) and library generation
- Experience with high-throughput mammalian expression and purification workflows
- FACS, BLI, epitope binning, and other antibody characterization techniques
- Familiarity with NGS, cryo-EM, and computational analyses related to antibody repertoires (preferred)
- Strong data integrity practices (ELN) and ability to work in cross-functional teams
- Collaborative and cross-functional team player
- Detail-oriented with strong problem-solving ability
- Adaptable and proactive in a fast-paced research environment
- Antibody discovery platforms (phage/yeast/mammalian display)
- Library generation and sequence discovery
- Mammalian expression (CHO, HEK293) and transfection
