Summer Intern/ViiV Translational Research & HIV Cure

GSK Internships & Co-ops powered by Atrium•Durham, NC

17h•Onsite

About The Position

The Translational Research and HIV Cure team within ViiV Healthcare is looking for a summer intern to test various lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulations in a pre-defined suite of assays. The primary goal of this work is to generate novel LNP formulations and determine transfectional efficiency as well as specific cellular uptake of LNPs in primary cell cultures. All assays will be run and analysis performed in accordance with established protocols.

Requirements

Pursuing a PhD or MS in Immunology, Virology, Nanomedicine/Nanotechnology, or a related field.
Minimum of 3 years of laboratory experience in immunology, virology, nanomedicine, or a related field.
Must be able to work full-time (35-40 hours/week) throughout the duration of the 12-week internship (May/June-August 2026).
Must have an active student status and/or within 12 months post-graduation from a MS degree program.
Post-doctoral candidates are not eligible.
Must successfully pass a drug screen and background check prior to assignment target start date.
A passing score is required to proceed in the application process after completing the GSK Digital Assessment.

Nice To Haves

Experience working with human blood and other donor specimens.
Experience formulating and purifying compounds and LNPs from stock solutions using dead-end and molecular weight cut-off filtration.
Experience testing samples in cuvette based DLS or spectrometry assays; Work with conducting zeta potential assays on a Malvern Zetasizer instrument preferred.
Quantifying nucleic acid concentration using dye-based spectrometry assays.
Experience isolating and culturing primary PBMCs and T cells using aseptic technique in a biosafety cabinet.
Ability to run compound and LNP treatment assays on primary cells in 96-well format.
Experience with running and analyzing data from 8 color flow cytometry assays.
Documentation of assay results in electronic notebook entries or in report forms associated with the assay protocols.

Responsibilities

Purify and concentrate preparatory lots of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulations using molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) and dead-end filtration.
Characterize the concentrated LNP preparations using dynamic light scattering (DLS) and RNA quantification assays.
Distribute and label LNP preps into single use aliquots.
Treat PBMC and isolated T cell cultures with LNP preps using 96-well plate format.
Run treated cultures on flow cytometry assays to determine LNP transfectional efficiency and select uptake in different cellular populations.
Analyze resultant data and carefully document experimental methods and findings in electronic lab notebooks or forms associated with assay protocols.
Attend team meetings and present results to the broader research team.