Senior Scientist, Cell and Lentivirus Production

About Apriori Bio

Apriori is working to create a world that is protected against viral threats. Our pioneering approach centers on a unique technology platform, Octavia™, which allows us to survey the entire landscape of existing and potential variants to design new vaccines against the most threatening viruses. Octavia can also inform public health policy in real time by predicting the impact of emerging variants. Apriori was founded in 2020 in Flagship Labs, a unit of Flagship Pioneering.

Apriori Bio is an early-stage biotechnology company with an ambitious and exciting mission: to provide humanity with variant-resilient protection against rapidly-evolving viruses.  The company is developing a revolutionary approach to this challenge and recruiting a team of top-tier scientists to develop its Octavia™ platform.

Position Summary:

We are seeking an innovative and entrepreneurial Senior Scientist with strong experience producing and validating large-scale lentiviral libraries, including those created with novel pseudotypes. The candidate will support cell line development and lead processes development to achieve high yields of lentiviral vectors. The ideal candidate will have a track record of success developing and optimizing cell lines and pseudotyped lentiviral vectors for discovery research. Experience in generating materials in suspension culture and/or bioreactors is highly desirable. This role requires collaboration with a matrixed team of scientists and computational biologists to deliver on the company platform and pipeline goals. Experience with vaccines, and viral pathogenesis or evolution is also desirable.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and optimize cell culture processes for lentivirus production to achieve high quality and high yields of lentiviral vectors
• Lead the development and implementation of strategies to scale up lentivirus production using engineered cell systems
• Conduct experiments, analyze data, and troubleshoot to improve cell line performance and productivity
• Consult on and design constructs for lentivirus production and cell engineering
• Work closely with other molecular virologists and computational scientists to support the design and deployment of innovative, proprietary assays
• Perform and oversee critical data-generating experiments
• Help build the infrastructure of laboratory protocols, tools, and systems to enable focused and rapid discovery and early pipeline development
• Communicate insights and conclusions to the scientific team and executive management

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD. in molecular virology, cell biology, or a related field with 5+ years experience, including direct experience with liter-scale lentivirus preparation; or M.S. in bio-medical engineering with 10+ years of closely related experience
• Direct experience with stable cell line generation and selection
• Direct experience with lentiviral pseudotyping and lentivirus production and purification in both small-scale suspension culture and bioreactors
• Experience with molecular cloning, qPCR, and sequence analysis

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with lentivirus library generation and/or high-throughput assay development
• Familiarity with NGS/RNA-Seq methods and their implementation
• Understanding of viral functional genomics and viral phylodynamics/ evolution

Values and Behaviors

We are seeking individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit, strong communication skills, and comfort working in and contributing to a dynamic and cross-functional team environment. The level of the role will be commensurate with the education and years of experience of the identified candidate.

At Flagship, we recognize there is no perfect candidate. If you have some of the experience listed above but not all, please apply anyway. Experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way. We are dedicated to building diverse and inclusive teams and look forward to learning more about your unique background.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto