Senior Scientist

200 staff. Limitless Potential. One team - Cancer Research Horizons.

Senior Scientist - Protein & Antibody Engineering - Under the leadership of Nick Tribble

Salary: £41,700 - £46,500 per annum (dependent on experience) plus benefits (includes up to 12% pension contribution and income protection)

Reports to: Group Leader, Antibody Discovery

Department: Research and Innovation

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time 35 hours per week (flexible working requests considered)

Location: Cori Building, Granta Park, Cambridge

Closing date: 27 April 2025 23:55 This vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received or once a suitable candidate is found, therefore we strongly recommend that you apply early to avoid disappointment. If you require more time to apply as part of a reasonable adjustment, please contact as soon as possible.

Visa Sponsorship: Cancer Research UK is able to consider visa sponsorship for this vacancy. If this applies to you, please ensure that this is clearly marked on your application.

Interview date: W/C 12 May 2025

At Cancer Research UK, we exist to beat cancer.

We currently have an exciting opportunity within our Drug Discovery team for an experienced Senior Scientist to expand and enhance our capabilities in therapeutic antibody discovery.

About CRUK Drug Discovery

As the world's biggest medical research charity, we've helped bring eleven new cancer drugs to market. However, there is still an urgent need to bring more effective treatments to patients faster.

We have recently developed a new approach to driving therapeutic innovation through the creation of Cancer Research Horizons (CRH). We have brought together Cancer Research UK's established drug discovery teams under one organisation and leadership team, combining our unique pipeline of cancer biology expertise and access to CRUK's world-class academic network, cutting edge technology platforms and clinical expertise to 1) bring new treatments to patients faster and 2) tackle the biggest challenges in discovering cancer drugs by seeking out more radical ideas and embracing risk in our bid to achieve success.

Based at sites in Cambridge, the CRUK Scotland Institute in Glasgow, the Francis Crick Institute in London, and Newcastle University, Cancer Research Horizons employs ~200 staff from both industrial and academic backgrounds

This is a great opportunity for a Protein Scientist, Protein Engineering Scientist or Antibody Engineering Scientist to expand their skill set across protein engineering, antibody screening & characterisation and protein science in a flexible environment with support from highly experienced colleagues from our multidisciplinary antibody discovery team. You will also have the opportunity to contribute to key pipeline and technology development projects and to showcase them to the wider organisation. We work in an inclusive environment where we welcome creative thinking and new ideas, we would welcome your input on implementation of new technologies and improvements to existing processes and infrastructure. Furthermore, we actively encourage our colleagues to celebrate our science, by attending conferences, presenting posters, giving talks at events and publishing papers.

What will I be doing?

• You'll apply a range of molecular biology techniques to enable protein expression and antibody drug discovery.

• Troubleshooting & designing solutions to drive innovative challenging drug discovery at pace.

• Taking a leading role in sourcing, production, design, QC and assessment of antigens & reagents required for discovery cascade.

• Working with experienced colleagues to drive design and optimisation of therapeutic antibodies.

• Working with colleagues, and collaborators to examine and evaluate potential drug targets and associated biological hypothesises.

• Supporting the expression and purification of antibodies and antibody fragment (scFv, Fab, VHH, IgG) from bacterial and mammalian expression hosts to enable antibody characterisation.

• Maintain and operate state of the art laboratory equipment.

• Potential to line management of junior staff

What skills will I need?

• Degree and/or PhD in relevant field

• Experience relevant to pre-clinical antibody drug discovery

• Understanding of biotherapeutic candidate discovery, ideally antibodies, and the overall development process for biotherapeutic drugs.

• Experience of purified affinity tagged proteins and/or antibodies using AKTAs and other automated purification platforms.

• Understanding of the requirements of protein QC analysis including techniques such as SDS-PAGE, HPLC and Western blotting.

• Knowledge of current molecular biology techniques relevant to the construction and mutagenesis of protein expression vectors.

• Awareness and/or experience utilising benefits of AI/ML within the context of antibody

• Demonstrated ability to proactive drive research success, prioritise own work effectively, multi-task and adapt flexibly to changing priorities.

• Strength in collaborative working and proven ability to interact and communicate effectively with diverse stakeholders, including those in academia

• Proven ability to clearly communicate scientific objectives and project results.

• Experience of automated liquid handling to enable the high-throughput expression and purification of protein is highly desirable.

• Knowledge of performing affinity measurements of protein-protein interactions, recombinant protein activity assays and/or running of high throughput cell based assays is highly desirable.

• Experience of informatic analysis and implementing and improving data workflows highly desirable

What will I gain?

Every one of our employees contributes to our progress and is supporting our work to beat cancer. We think that's impressive.

In return, we make sure you are supported by a generous benefits package, a wide range of career and personal development opportunities and high-quality tools, policies, and processes to enable you to do your job well.

Our benefits package includes a substantial retirement plan, a generous and flexible leave allowance, discounts on anything from travel to technology, gym membership, and much more.

We don't forget people have lives outside of work too and so we actively encourage a flexible working culture.

Our work - from funding cutting-edge research to developing public policy - will change the world. It's exciting to be part of our team.

How do I apply?

We operate an anonymised shortlisting process in our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. CVs are required for all applications; but we won't be able to view them until we invite you for an interview. Instead, we ask you to complete the work history section of the online application form for us to be able to assess you quickly, fairly and objectively.