Position Summary
Cellares is seeking an innovative and motivated Research Associate with expertise across cellular biology and engineering to join the R&D group within the Process Development team. This individual will interface across many parts of the company and contribute significantly to the development of our advanced cell therapy manufacturing platform.
The primary focus of this position is to support the design and execution of collaborative experiments that span biological, engineering and technology development. This work will help establish and optimize the fundamental performance capabilities of Cellares’ hardware, software and infrastructure, generating cross-cutting datasets and guidances that will benefit all programs.
The ideal candidate will have a strong science and engineering background, with demonstrated experience with cell culture, cell purification/selection and/or genetic manipulation. Expertise within mechanical, chemical, software and/or systems engineering would further position a candidate to succeed in this role.
Candidates should enjoy working in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment, and be prepared to tackle a broad range of challenges as the company grows.
Responsibilities
- Design and execute mammalian cell therapy process development and hardware testing experiments using scientific principles and statistical approaches (DOE)
- Interface cross-functionally with Systems and Software Engineering teams to test new technologies relevant to process onboarding and Cell Shuttle performance optimization
- Analyze and present technical results at departmental meetings
- Contribute to high-quality technical documents, procedures, reports
- Become quickly adept at identifying bottlenecks and opportunities through hands-on independent and collaborative investigations
- Gather and review system requirements, develop robust test plans, oversee and support execution of experiments
- Develop training materials for process protocols and techniques, and onboard new team members as needed
- Serve as subject matter expert where appropriate for cell therapy process technology improvements, and represent Process Development as needed
Requirements
- Bachelor's, Master's or PhD in Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Biology, Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering or related field with at least 3 years of process development experience, preferably in cell or gene therapy manufacturing
- Strong understanding of cell biology and engineering principles
- Experience designing experiments and troubleshooting semi-automated instruments
- Hands-on experience with cell culture, gene editing, magnetic selection, etc. preferred
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills; able to interpret, summarize, and present scientific results in a clear manner to technical and non-technical audiences
- Creative, self-motivated, eager to take on a wide variety of tasks and grow with the evolving technology
- Self-awareness, integrity, authenticity, enthusiasm and a growth mindset
This is Cellares
Cellares is the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) and takes an Industry 4.0 approach to mass manufacturing the living drugs of the 21st century. The company is both developing and operating integrated technologies for cell therapy manufacturing to accelerate access to life-saving cell therapies. The company’s Cell Shuttle integrates all the technologies required for the entire manufacturing process in a flexible and high-throughput platform that delivers true walk-away, end-to-end automation. Cell Shuttles will be deployed in Cellares’ Smart Factories around the world to meet total patient demand for cell therapies at global scale. Partnering with Cellares enables academics, biotechs, and pharma companies to accelerate drug development and scale out manufacturing, lower process failure rates, lower manufacturing costs, and meet global patient demand.
The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, California with its commercial-scale IDMO Smart Factory in Bridgewater, New Jersey. The company is backed by world-class investors and has raised over $355 million in financing.
Leveling will be based on overall experience, education, and demonstration of knowledge throughout the interview process.
What We Do
Cellares is revolutionizing cell therapy manufacturing. We are developing a one-of-a-kind solution, The Cell Shuttle, to overcome the challenges associated with manufacturing so these life-saving therapies are affordable and widely available to patients who can benefit.
The clinical impact of cell therapy in treating cancer has been proven, but this therapeutic approach has several limitations, especially in manufacturing, leaving extremely sick patients waiting for treatment and desperate for hope.
Since cell therapy is currently produced for a single patient at a time, it is expensive to manufacture, requiring significant time and resources, and is difficult to scale.
Preclinical and clinical scientists, as well as commercial cell therapy manufacturers also lack the options to fully automate their manufacturing process quickly, safely, cost-effectively and at the scale they need.
The Cell Shuttle is an automated and closed end-to-end manufacturing solution that is flexible and scalable, enabling customers to run exact processes specified for their cell therapy. Compared with the current manual manufacturing processes for cell therapy, the Cell Shuttle’s next-generation automated manufacturing solution has 10 times the scalability (meaning 10 times more patient doses can be produced simultaneously), enables a three-fold reduction in process failure rates and will reduce the per-patient manufacturing cost by up to 70 percent for most processes.
