Translational Bioinformatics Lead (Associate Director)

Do you want to be part of an inclusive team that works to develop innovative therapies for patients? Every day, we are driven to develop and deliver innovative and effective new medicines to patients and physicians.  If you want to be part of this exciting work, you belong at Astellas!

Astellas Pharma Inc. is a pharmaceutical company conducting business in more than 70 countries around the world. We are committed to turning innovative science into medical solutions that bring value and hope to patients and their families. Keeping our focus on addressing unmet medical needs and conducting our business with ethics and integrity enables us to improve the health of people throughout the world. For more information on Astellas, please visit our website at www.astellas.com.

This position is based in Northbrook, Illinois. Remote work from certain states may be permitted in accordance with Astellas’ Responsible Flexibility Guidelines. Candidates interested in remote work are encouraged to apply.

Purpose and Scope:

Responsible for providing bioinformatics expertise to drug target selection, translational research, patient selection strategy and clinical biomarker analysis for multiple drug discovery and development programs. Develop bioinformatics analysis plans, perform hands-on analyses, and generate reports on internal and external data sets related to Astellas/partner discovery and development programs. Responsibilities also include developing new bioinformatics capabilities to support new modalities and therapeutic focus areas.

Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

• Leads bioinformatics strategy and develop analysis plans to address asset team’s clinical development questions
• Utilizes state of the art bioinformatics methods, internal and external data to address translational questions related to indication selection, patient segmentation, and biomarker identification
• Conducts bioinformatics analysis of clinical trial omics data to support POM and patient selection
• Supports data ingestion and conducts analysis using translational and biomarker data management platforms
• Selects the appropriate data sets and analytical approaches for drug target identification and validation to support drug research
• Develops new analysis tools and databases to meet the current and future portfolio needs
• Identifies and evaluates external resources (CRO/academic collaborator) to complement internal capabilities

Qualifications:

Required

• PhD in computational biology, bioinformatics, or other biomedical sciences with a minimum of seven years’ experience in applying translational bioinformatics approaches to drug discovery/development, preferably in a biopharma setting
• Strong publication record in peer reviewed journals
• Demonstrated experience in cancer genomics and omics data analyses, including experience with developing pipelines for next-generation sequencing data analysis and QC
• Demonstrated experience in designing and performing bioinformatics analyses to address translational questions, including patient segmentation, biomarker selection, elucidation of MoA in clinical settings, and identification of drug resistance mechanisms in clinical trials
• Strong programming skills (including R, Python, SAS) and deep-knowledge for statistical analysis and machine learning
• Experience with data visualization using web application such as Shiny/plotly
• Experience with high-performance, clustered systems and cloud computing environments
• Complete independence in providing project level bioinformatics support, from planning to execution and reporting
• Strong communication skills and demonstrated ability to influence and lead in a matrix environment

Preferred:

• Experience in analyzing single-cell RNA-seq, spatial transcriptomics and proteomics data
• Experience with human genetics data and oncology real-world clinical genomics and transcriptomics database
• Administration experience of clustered or cloud computing systems

Salary Range

$141,400 - $222,200 (Final compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to skills, experience and organizational equity considerations)

Benefits:

• Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance
• Generous Paid Time Off options, including Vacation and Sick time, plus national holidays including year-end shut down
• 401(k) match and annual company contribution
• Company paid life insurance
• Annual Corporate Bonus and Quarterly Sales Incentive for eligible positions
• Long Term Incentive Plan for eligible positions
• Company fleet vehicle for eligible positions
• Referral bonus program

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