Gene Therapy Scientist I/II
South San Francisco, CA
Research – Gene therapy team /
Onsite, Full-time /
On-site
Are you ready to help Gordian maximize our gene delivery potential and use our platform to enable high throughput construct optimization across all of our therapeutic indications?
The Destination:
Gordian Biotechnology is a therapeutics company whose mission is to cure age-related diseases and ultimately allow people to lead longer, healthier lives. Traditional ex vivo screening methods have failed to produce effective treatments, as age-related diseases have complex causes that include interactions with the aged environment. To address this problem, Gordian’s platform is the first and only to enable pooled in vivo tests at scale in our proprietary “patient avatars”. We are able to deliver and test hundreds of therapeutics in individual animals, and scale efficacy testing to cover every therapeutic target at the beginning of the drug discovery process (more info on our website). We can choose targets that really impact disease biology, to develop and commercialize therapies for the world’s deadliest diseases, and eventually for the processes of aging itself.
The Journey:
Our mission is audacious, and the path will be full of both challenges and excitement. Two things characterize the Gordian experience: 1) We work as a team, with ownership in our own roles and trust in each other. 2) We strive for extraordinary outcomes, and in doing so grow our skills and capability.
Team – Relying on each other begins with transparency. We set clear goals, visibly connecting individuals and teams to our company objectives. This empowers each of us to make autonomous decisions about our work, knowing how they will affect the bigger picture. Our communication happens out in the open. We give and receive feedback from a perspective of helping each other grow, share mistakes, and ask for help.
Extraordinary – Every day, we ask ourselves ‘How could this process/outcome be even better?’. Knowing our overall mission, we do what we think helps us make the most progress, without asking for permission. We don’t shy away from big challenges or unknown territory, but find a way to excel. Our colleagues are amazing, both at what they do and as people. They inspire us to keep up, to not let them down, and be inspiring in return.
Like any cutting-edge research environment, Gordian doesn't believe in a standard 9 to 5 day. We set ambitious project goals and support each other to meet them, while maintaining the balance individuals need to thrive and achieve excellence. Our team is geared towards helping each other out and maintaining a culture of intellectual and social fun. We like getting things done and keep standing meetings to a minimum. This year, in accordance with our unlimited vacation policy, each member took an average of 4.5 weeks of (offline) vacation, not including major holidays. We unwind with weekly team lunches, and support each others’ projects both experimentally and by ‘pre-mortem’ meetings to discuss possible failure modes and experimental design.
If this environment sounds appealing, help us bring it to life. We are at the beginning of a long journey, and want both your ability and your personality along for the ride. Our culture is a source of great pride; it represents both who we are, and who we wish to be.
You can dive deeper here.
About the Role:
Your mission as Gene therapy Scientist is to improve Gordian’s delivery vectors, by developing new strategies to produce and engineer preclinical AAVs and set up necessary assays and quality assurance for lead optimization. This involves using our platform to enable high throughput construct optimization across all four of our indications (MASH, HFpEF, IPF, OA). You’ll contribute to the production of AAV vectors through adherent and suspension HEK cell transfection techniques and a suite of scalable AAV purification techniques (depth filter, TFF, FPLC). Simultaneously, you’ll set up necessary assays and qualifications for AAV or other modalities in clinical development as well as develop high throughput methods to determine the best delivery and expression modality for our lead candidates.
In your first two months, you’ll get familiar with our vector technologies and workflows to run both adherent and suspension cell culture transfection and purification, as well as getting familiar with our platform and the use of sequencing technologies in quantifying AAVs. Additionally, you’ll contribute to the completion of vectors for in vivo validation projects for both MASH and HFpEF targets.
By four months, you’ll understand necessary metrics for advancing AAVs to the clinic and you’ll set up and codify standard protocols for QA for lead optimization. You’ll establish the best techniques for AAV QC metrics.
At six months, you’ll use our platform to set up high throughput screening for lead optimization and focus your efforts on potent expression and the prevention of AAV immunogenicity for clinical validation through capsid and genome design.
About You:
You have a history of successful execution, both in- and outside of your job description. You want a chance to do your best work, immerse yourself and be creative, with people you’ll want to spend most of your time with.
You truly want to play a big role in an early-stage startup: A fast-paced environment full of both uncertainty and new challenges, demanding relentless resourcefulness.
You have solid protein purification skills with prior experience in column chromatography (e.g. HPLC, FPLC, affinity chromatography, or ion-exchange chromatography)
You should have sufficient experience with cell culture and cloning that you can routinely run large-scale projects with sufficient bandwidth to pursue exploratory projects.
You have a strong background in biological systems (in vitro or in vivo), such as testing gene therapy products or compounds within animal models or cell lines.
You have experience managing and executing time-sensitive projects, in collaboration with other specialists. You have deep expertise, and broad curiosity. You are excited to use and develop bleeding edge technology, to advance biology and human health.
You have a mindset of continuous optimization, both for expanding our capabilities and making core processes more efficient. You should combine broad curiosity and rapid execution in exploring new delivery strategies.
Knowledge of AAV biology/gene therapy, industry experience in the gene therapy field, different AAV scale up methods (e.g. experience with bioreactors, large liquid cultures, peristaltic pumps), experience working on biological characterization tools (qPCR, ddPCR, ELISA, other assays) and knowledge of different therapeutic delivery modalities (ASOs, siRNA, lipid nanoparticles, etc.) are all pluses.
The Details:
Gordian aims to provide everything you need to thrive. Beyond our community and science, you’ll have enough equity to be a true stakeholder in the company, competitive salary, full health/dental/vision/life insurance, 401k with match, onsite lunch paid for 3 days a week, an onsite gym, whatever vacation you need to be at your peak, remote work flexibility, and access to world-class mentors and advisors to support your professional growth. Our building is in the heart of the biotech capital of South San Francisco.
$115,000 - $140,000 a year
