Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

Overview

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center is an independent, nonprofit organization providing adult cancer treatment and groundbreaking research focused on cancer and infectious diseases. Based in Seattle, Fred Hutch is the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in Washington.

With a track record of global leadership in bone marrow transplantation, HIV/AIDS prevention, immunotherapy and COVID-19 vaccines, Fred Hutch has earned a reputation as one of the world’s leading cancer, infectious disease and biomedical research centers. Fred Hutch operates eight clinical care sites that provide medical oncology, infusion, radiation, proton therapy and related services, and network affiliations with hospitals in five states.

Together, our fully integrated research and clinical care teams seek to discover new cures to the world’s deadliest diseases and make life beyond cancer a reality.

At Fred Hutch we value collaboration, compassion, determination, excellence, innovation, integrity and respect. Our mission is directly tied to the humanity, dignity and inherent value of each employee, patient, community member and supporter. Our commitment to learning across our differences and similarities make us stronger. We seek employees who bring different and innovative ways of seeing the world and solving problems.

The Ring Lab of Synthetic and Systems Immunopharmacology is located within the Translational Science and Therapeutics Division and is a member of the Immunotherapy Integrated Research Center (IIRC). Their primary focus is on developing unique and first-in-class therapeutic drugs for cancer immunotherapy using cutting-edge protein engineering with directed evolution. The lab has developed therapeutics that are currently in clinical trials, such as ST-067 (a "decoy-resistant" IL-18), MDNA-11 (CD122-biased IL-2), and ALX-148/evorpacept (an ultra-high affinity SΙRPα decoy).

Moreover, the Ring Lab is actively working on developing platforms for identifying new targets in cancer immunotherapy. These technologies include the REAP platform for discovering autoantibodies in patient samples, and high-throughput techniques in synthetic antibody engineering and proteogenomics to pinpoint new tumor antigens.

The Ring Lab is recruiting a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with expertise in protein/antibody engineering, synthetic biology, or immunology. This position will involve research projects that seek to pinpoint novel targets for precision cancer therapy with CAR-T, T cell engagers, or antibody-drug conjugates (ADC). Central to these programs is an emerging “epitomics” technology for target discovery that can pinpoint specific molecular features that distinguish cancer from normal tissues.

This provides a level of resolution that is much finer than conventionally determined via transcriptional or proteomic approaches and can reveal a new universe of tumor antigens that were previously undetectable. Research in this area involves isolation of antibody/nanobody binders to these tumor antigens and downstream functional characterization of their anti-tumor efficacy, including by pooled CAR-T screening and evaluation in CD3-bispecific and ADC formats.

The ideal candidate will be a highly-curious, motivated, independent, and collaborative research scientist keen to explore new paradigms of therapeutic development. They will work closely with Dr. Ring, lab manager Alison Notestine, external collaborators, and other members of the Ring laboratory to execute highly-multidisciplinary studies. Furthermore, they will have the opportunity and responsibilty to contribute to the preparation of research reports and scientific manuscripts, as well as present at scientific conferences and symposiums.

The Ring lab welcomes candidates with a diverse range of career aspirations and has a track-record of supporting trainees to pursue careers in academia, biotech/pharma, life-science investing, and consulting.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• MD or PhD in a related field
• Experience in one or more of the following areas:
  • Cancer immunology/immunotherapy
  • Protein/antibody engineering
  • Directed evolution using…