Commercial Co-Founder in Residence, Improving Recombinant Protein Titres

We are looking for a commercial co-founder with industry-specific, technical and commercial domain expertise with keen interest in founding, and building a global scale, impact driven, high growth company from ground up.

We are seeking applications from experienced industry, startup and/or new science-based technology development professionals from anywhere in the world to work with us on a novel technology that uses unexploited biology to unlock protein production with applications in biomanufacturing and therapeutics.

This role is full-time, starting asap and fully remote until venture incorporation and spin-out, date TBD.

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Low transgene expression and loss of transgene expression over time is a significant challenge for the biomanufacturing industry, as well as a bottleneck for cell and gene therapy development. For the production of proteins , declining transgene expression over time reduces product titres, increases production costs and can prevent viable products from being made at all. In a world that is moving towards biomanufacturing, solving this challenge has the potential to unlock the full potential of biomanufacturing applications, enabling their development and increasing scaling efficiency. With biologics revenue poised to overtake small molecule revenue globally in the coming years, and cell and gene therapies in its infancy, this is a challenge worth solving from a therapeutic and commercial perspective.

OUR APPROACH:

In contrast to current transgene optimisation tactics, we are learning from nature, leveraging novel and proprietary insights from human genetic elements which have evolved over millions of years. Buoyed by exciting proof of concept data, we are developing wet lab and computational systems to apply these novel mechanisms to biomanufacturing. Our mission is to significantly improve recombinant protein titres, increasing scaling efficiency and allowing difficult-to-express proteins to be commercially scaled for the first time.

• PhD in molecular biology, biomedical engineering, molecular genetics, biochemistry or a similar field;

• Drug discovery or (pre-)clinical development expertise;

• Real-world and established network in biomanufacturing and/or gene therapies;

• Experience creating and managing commercial partnerships;

• Highly motivated by unsolved challenges in biomanufacturing and driven to transform the way we approach these challenges;

• Excellent entrepreneurial track record, demonstrated through impactful innovation and company creation/leadership;

• Fundraising expertise, particularly from VC.

Preferred (nice-to-have):

• Deep biological insight into gene expression pathways;

• An understanding of advanced computational approaches including generative AI and machine learning;

• Track record of thought leadership in the field;

• Previously been an inventor/contributor on patents, etc.