Research Scientist - Antibody Discovery and Transfer

Elanco•Indianapolis, IN

About The Position

At Elanco (NYSE: ELAN) – it all starts with animals! As a global leader in animal health, we are dedicated to innovation and delivering products and services to prevent and treat disease in farm animals and pets. At Elanco, we are driven by our vision of Food and Companionship Enriching Life and our purpose – all to Go Beyond for Animals, Customers, Society and Our People. At Elanco, we pride ourselves on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. We believe that diversity is the driving force behind innovation, creativity, and overall business success. Here, you’ll be part of a company that values and champions new ways of thinking, work with dynamic individuals, and acquire new skills and experiences that will propel your career to new heights. Making animals’ lives better makes life better – join our team today! Elanco Animal Health is seeking a highly motivated and innovative Research Scientist to join our Discovery Research team. This role is specifically focused on leveraging advanced Single B-cell sequencing platforms and Immune Library construction to identify high-quality therapeutic antibody candidates for animal health. The successful candidate will be a technical expert in capturing and isolating the natural immune repertoire of diverse species through comprehensive NGS workflows to drive the earliest stages of our biologics pipeline.

Requirements

PhD in Immunology, Molecular Biology, or Biotechnology with 0-3 years of relevant industrial experience in biologics discovery.
Direct, hands-on experience with Single B-cell sequencing workflows and high-speed flow cytometry (FACS).
Expertise in NGS library preparation and associated molecular biology techniques.
Experience in Immune Library construction and display technologies
Advanced proficiency in high-throughput PCR and molecular cloning

Responsibilities

Lead and execute end-to-end single-B-cell antibody discovery workflows, including immune-cell processing, FACS-based isolation of antigen-specific B cells, single-cell sequencing, and high-throughput molecular rescue of paired V-region sequences.
Design and construct high-diversity immune libraries from immunized animals. Implement robust NGS workflows for library characterization, monitoring diversity, and tracking selection dynamics across display platforms.
Manage complex panning and selection strategies using phage or yeast display to isolate rare, high-affinity binders from diverse immune repertoires.
Utilize high-throughput RT-PCR, nested PCR, and specialized cloning techniques to rescue heavy and light chain variable regions from single cells.
Work closely with bioinformatics pipelines to integrate large-scale NGS datasets, enabling the rapid identification of novel antibody lineages and analyzing repertoire convergence.
Represent the antibody discovery group in cross-functional project teams communicating discovery screening strategy
Maintain precise electronic laboratory notebooks (ELN) and present technical discovery data at internal research forums and stakeholder meetings.
Evaluate and implement emerging antibody discovery technologies and workflows to improve throughput, repertoire diversity, functional screening, and discovery timelines.