Sr Scientist, Bioconjugation

Abzena • Bristol, PA

2d

About The Position

The Bioconjugation Process Development Senior Scientist leads downstream bioconjugation process development activities supporting Abzena Bristol’s development and manufacturing operations. The role develops, optimizes, and scales processes for conjugated biotherapeutics, including antibody-drug conjugates, conjugate vaccines, protein-oligonucleotide conjugates, peptide-protein conjugates, and chelator-antibody conjugates.

The position involves hands-on execution and development of conjugation reactions, purification, filtration, and product characterization. It also serves as an independent technical lead and subject-matter expert for internal and external project communications, while managing and supervising technical team line reports. The scientist contributes to laboratory operations, maintains technical knowledge of advances in the field, and prepares and reviews relevant project documentation. The role requires adherence to ethical, quality, regulatory, and company standards.

Requirements

• PhD, or BS/MS degree in biochemical sciences or bio-engineering with industry experience in biotherapeutic development or bioconjugation: more than 1 year with a PhD, or more than 3 years with an MS/BS.
• Experience in preparative purification of biological molecules, such as antibodies, carrier proteins, viruses, viral vectors, or other biological molecules.
• Expertise in normal-flow and tangential-flow filtrations, including TFF and UF/DF.
• Knowledge of bioprocess optimization strategies and experimental design (DoE).
• Thorough hands-on experience with preparative chromatography systems and manual or automated TFF skids.
• Expertise in quantitatively determining scalable process parameters for normal-flow filtration, tangential-flow filtration, and preparative chromatographic separations.
• Knowledge of cGMP manufacturing operations and GxP principles.
• Strong knowledge of bioconjugation reactions, techniques, and approaches.
• Experience with protein bioanalytical techniques, such as HPLC, LC-MS, and UV-spectrophotometry.
• Experience with large-scale bioprocess equipment, such as pallet tanks, pumps, biowelders, biosealers, bio-rockers, and single-use assemblies.

Responsibilities

• Operate to the highest ethical and moral standards and comply with Abzena policies and procedures.
• Communicate effectively with clients, supervisors, colleagues, and staff, and participate as a team player in Abzena’s business.
• Adhere to regulatory and company quality standards, policies, procedures, and mission.
• Perform other duties as assigned.
• Contribute to laboratory operations, including instrument and equipment operations, material shipment preparation, and consumables procurement.
• Develop downstream conjugation bioprocesses for manufacturing conjugated biotherapeutics.
• Collaborate on development, optimization, and scale-up of bioconjugation reactions, purification steps, and characterization approaches.
• Execute chromatographic purifications, membrane filtrations, buffer and solution preparation, and conjugation reaction work-up.
• Perform, develop, and optimize bioanalytical characterization of bioconjugate products.
• Author and review laboratory notebooks, process development reports, protocols, batch records, SOPs, and technical presentations.
• Maintain technical understanding of advancements in bioconjugation and bioprocessing through literature searches and review.
• Serve independently as a bioconjugation process-development technical lead and subject-matter expert for internal and external project communications.
• Manage and supervise technical team line reports.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree