Position Summary
Cellares is seeking an innovative and highly motivated Senior Applications Scientist with expertise in complex automation equipment to join the Research and Development team. This individual will interface across many parts of the company and contribute significantly to the development of our advanced cell therapy manufacturing platform.
The primary focus of this position is to function as the liaison between hardware engineering and process development groups. This hands-on role will require running cell therapy manufacturing processes and designing and executing experiments that drive the continuous improvement of the Cellares platform. The ideal candidate will be a strong technical contributor and cross-functional collaborator with demonstrated experience developing robust autologous and allogeneic cell therapy processes.
Candidates should enjoy working in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment, and be prepared to tackle a broad selection of challenges as the company grows.
Responsibilities
- On-site technical support of and collaboration with Process Development Team, working on ongoing and future client processes, aiding with workflow definition and optimization, troubleshooting, root cause investigation, continuous improvement
- Design and execute complex experiments using sound scientific principles and statistical approaches (DOE) to support the overall development efforts of the Cellares platform
- Interface internally and cross-functionally with Analytical Development, MSAT, Quality, Manufacturing, and Engineering to implement new processes and technologies as part of the core technology transfer team
- Provide technical training and guidance to junior team members
- Author high-quality technical documents, procedures, reports, white papers
- Analyze and present technical results to peers and senior leadership
Requirements
- BS or MS in Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Biology, Biochemistry, or related field with 14+ years of process development experience in the cell and gene therapy field OR PhD in relevant fields with 6+ years of industry experience in the cell and gene therapy field
- Extensive experience designing scale-up experiments and troubleshooting semi-automated instruments
- Hands-on experience with both autologous and allogeneic cell therapy manufacturing processes
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills; Able to interpret, summarize, and present scientific results in a clear, concise, accurate manner to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Python scripting experience is a plus
- Experience with flow cytometry and cell based assays preferred
- Strong understanding of cell biology and immunology preferred
- Creative, self-motivated, eager to take on a wide variety of tasks and grow with the evolving technology
- Strong understanding of cell biology and immunology preferred
- Self-awareness, integrity, authenticity, and a growth/entrepreneurial mindset
Top Skills
What We Do
Cellares is revolutionizing cell therapy manufacturing. We are developing a one-of-a-kind solution, The Cell Shuttle, to overcome the challenges associated with manufacturing so these life-saving therapies are affordable and widely available to patients who can benefit.
The clinical impact of cell therapy in treating cancer has been proven, but this therapeutic approach has several limitations, especially in manufacturing, leaving extremely sick patients waiting for treatment and desperate for hope.
Since cell therapy is currently produced for a single patient at a time, it is expensive to manufacture, requiring significant time and resources, and is difficult to scale.
Preclinical and clinical scientists, as well as commercial cell therapy manufacturers also lack the options to fully automate their manufacturing process quickly, safely, cost-effectively and at the scale they need.
The Cell Shuttle is an automated and closed end-to-end manufacturing solution that is flexible and scalable, enabling customers to run exact processes specified for their cell therapy. Compared with the current manual manufacturing processes for cell therapy, the Cell Shuttle’s next-generation automated manufacturing solution has 10 times the scalability (meaning 10 times more patient doses can be produced simultaneously), enables a three-fold reduction in process failure rates and will reduce the per-patient manufacturing cost by up to 70 percent for most processes.
