Senior Associate Scientist, Ligand Discovery

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals•Cambridge, MA

18h•Onsite

About The Position

The Delivery Sciences team at Alnylam is seeking a Senior Associate Scientist to contribute to our ligand discovery efforts for expanding RNAi delivery to all tissues. The successful candidate will help drive in vitro ligand selection campaigns, characterize ligand-receptor interactions, support antigen production and characterization, and evaluate ligands for tissue-specific RNAi delivery. The individual will need excellent organization and communication skills to work collaboratively across multiple groups in the research organization. This position is onsite and will be primarily located in Cambridge, MA.

Requirements

BS/MS in Biochemistry, Molecular/Cell Biology, Chemical/Biomedical Engineering, or related field with 3-5 years of experience in a biopharma setting.
Experience with sterile cell culture technique is essential (routine passaging, viability assays, transfection/transformation).
Strong organizational skills, diligent record keeping (ELN, inventory management), and the ability to manage multiple projects in parallel.
Excellent communication skills (both written and oral) are essential.

Nice To Haves

Experience with protein assays including ELISA, SDS-PAGE/Western blot, immunoprecipitation, SPR/BLI is strongly desired.
Experience with flow cytometry is preferred.
Experience with molecular biology techniques (PCR, cloning, plasmid prep, NGS library prep) is a plus.
Experience with preparative scale protein purification (affinity chromatography, SEC) is a plus.

Responsibilities

Contribute to the design and execution of ligand selection campaigns using display technologies (e.g. phage/yeast display, MACS/FACS) against diverse membrane proteins.
Characterize ligand-receptor interactions using multiple biochemical techniques and cell-based assays (ELISA, BLI/SPR, flow cytometry, epitope binning).
Support library construction and hit sequence recovery using molecular biology techniques including PCR, cloning, and plasmid purification.
Assist with preparation and characterization of soluble and membrane-embedded protein antigens (e.g. fusion proteins, nanodiscs, VLPs).
Work collaboratively across multiple groups to evaluate ligands for tissue-specific RNAi delivery in vitro and in vivo