Advisor/Sr. Advisor Bioconjugation Process Development

At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We are a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our employees around the world work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. We give our best effort to our work, and we put people first. We’re looking for people who are determined to make life better for people around the world.

Organization Overview: 

Bioproduct Research and Development (BRD) is the large-molecule process development organization within Lilly.  BRD is responsible for material and data generation to support clinical trials and commercialization of biologic therapeutics such as mAbs and bioconjugates. Our team will work to accelerate the development and manufacturing of new bioconjugate medicines for our patients. We seek to perform innovative and cutting-edge research to deliver bioconjugation processes, knowledge, and best practices to support clinical trials and commercialization for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), antibody-peptide conjugates (APCs), and antibody-RNA conjugates (ARCs/AOCs).  We collaborate with our Synthetic Molecule Design and Development (SMDD), discovery, and biologics development colleagues to advance this exciting class of new drugs and seek fundamental learning and platform approaches to their development.

Responsibilities:

Our bioconjugation team is tasked with establishing the infrastructure required to conduct detailed process development and glean fundamental understanding related to bioconjugate synthesis.  A successful applicant will have experience with synthetic organic chemistry and bioconjugation to produce ADCs and similar modalities.  The applicant should bring a skillset and knowledge to help grow our research facilities and infrastructure. We have an expanding and diverse portfolio of bioconjugates that require improved process understanding and development methods.  Primary responsibilities include:

• Establish a productive laboratory program by personally conducting and managing internal and external research plans, collaborate with teammates to analyze the results, form conclusions, propose logical next steps, and report findings to a larger team. 
• Thrive at the interface between disciplines and departments to quickly move from one scientific challenge to another while navigating ambiguity.
• Perform fundamental and detailed studies of each process step for bioconjugation development.
• Propose and test new methods to achieve bioconjugation and bioconjugate development. Collaborate and share findings with discovery scientists.
• Embrace and celebrate diversity by using a relevant and unique background and set of experiences to provide new ideas to deliver innovative solutions. Strong communication (oral and written), organizational, and leadership skills are expected.
• Bring new and useful concepts, methods, and ideas for how research can be improved and share these to make our group better.
• Engage externally through conference attendance, presentations and publications. Identify, partner, and develop process innovations from the outside to complement existing capabilities and areas of focus and incorporate these across the portfolio.
• Demonstrate learning agility across modalities (e.g. small molecule, peptide and oligonucleotide).
• Help drive and develop the commercial manufacturing strategy and collaborate with manufacturing partners to deliver robust processes that are ultimately suitable for large-scale manufacturing.

Basic Requirements: 

PhD in synthetic organic chemistry, biochemistry, chemical biology, or related field or MS in related field with 5+ years of relevant industrial experience.

Additional Skills/Preferences:

• Postdoctoral experience in a field related to bioconjugation.
• Experience with small molecule organic synthesis, knowledge of reaction mechanisms, and design of reactions.
• Experience with performing bioconjugation reactions at small-scale.
• Knowledge of basic antibody class, structure, and function.

• Knowledge of and hands-on experience with analytical methods used for small molecules and biomolecules (RP-HPLC, SEC, IEX, HIC, LC-MS, CE-SDS).
• Experience with handling small quantities of highly potent small molecules in a safe manner.
• Good interpersonal skills and a persistent tendency for collaboration
• Demonstrated self-initiative and appropriate risk-taking behaviors.
• Ability to prioritize multiple activities and thrive in a setting that requires quick movement between scientific challenges and comfort with ambiguity.
• An active scientific curiosity and