About Earli
Earli exists to make cancer a benign experience. Earli does that by turning cancers against themselves: genetically forcing them to reveal themselves early, and then kill themselves – precisely and clearly distinguishable from benign lesions at early stages. Based on original technology from Stanford’s renowned Gambhir lab, Earli designs genetic constructs that are injected intravenously that turn cancer cells against themselves. These programmable synthetic promoter-reporter sequences “flip on” like light switches only in dysregulated cancer cells and turn them into "factories." The cancer is forced to produce either an epitope “docking station” for imaging agents, or a cytokine for immune system activation against the tumor. Thus, Earli’s platform enables immediate diagnosis and treatment of early cancers, rather than long-term observation that can lead to deadly metastatic recurrence.
Earli's synthetic target expression platform has evolved over five years of deep bioengineering. The system can now detect broad ranges of patient mutations, distinguish between malignant and benign lesions, and offer independence from often elusive natural biomarkers.
Earli has raised $82m in three rounds from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Emerson Collective, Stanford, Perceptive Advisors, Casdin Capital, Marc Benioff, Sands Capital, Breyer Capital, Tailwinds (American-Korean) etc.
Its Scientific Advisory Board includes Jim Allison (Nobel Laureate, Immuno Oncology), Bob Langer (MIT, co-founder Moderna), Phil Greenberg (Hutch, co-founder Juno), Pam Sharma (MD Anderson), Charlie Rudin (Sloan Kettering), Alan Ashworth (UCSF Cancer Center).
Who You Are
- You share our same sense of dedication, scientific passion and entrepreneurial spirit
- You work well in a fast-paced and extremely focused startup environment
- You are not only smart, but clever and constantly think outside the box
- You are able to make logical decisions in an instant when there is little time to evaluate
- You are a natural communicator and relationship builder
- You stay calm under high pressure and stress
- You have the ability to multi-task in a serious way, with an extreme attention to detail
- You become a representative of the core DNA of the company through who you are
The Position
We're seeking a passionate, creative, and dedicated Scientist/Senior scientist to join our in vivo pharmacology team. In this role, you will be pivotal in supporting the development of our cancer-activated gene expression platform utilizing animal models. This position reports to the Director of Translational Biology and you will directly lead projects answering scientific challenges across multiple scientific groups. As a rapidly growing biotech company, we offer an exciting and collaborative work environment where every team member plays a vital role in our success.
Your Primary Responsibilities
- Design, plan, perform, and analyze rodent in vivo experiments testing our cancer-activated expression platform with a high degree of independence.
- Identify, pilot and develop new murine oncology models relevant to the Earli platform
- At the senior level, candidate will be expected to set project goals, think creatively of opportunities to leverage cutting-edge technologies, and coordinate with cross-functional teams to achieve milestones and deliverables
- Maintain familiarity with current scientific literature, routinely diving into topics quickly to inform the definition & scope of new projects, define nascent hypotheses & alternative models
- This role is estimated to be 75% bench-focused with a high proficiency in conducting animal-related techniques. 25% of your time will be devoted to project and team management including mentoring junior team members as well as troubleshooting issues.
- The successful candidate will lead a small team of with one or more direct reports.
- Work closely with Earli’s formulation and bioanalytical groups to assist in coordinating studies and analyzing data sets
- Act as in vivo subject matter expert in project team meetings
Your Required Experience, Knowledge and Skill
- PhD degree in biology, pharmacology, or other relevant field is required with experience in in vivo pharmacology and murine oncology studies in a biotech/pharma setting (at least 2 years for the junior level and 4 years for the senior level).
- Applicants with a Master degree and at least 5 years of relevant industry experience will also be considered
- Possess a very good depth of expertise within in vivo oncology research with a proven track in cancer model development as evidenced by publications, posters or patent applications.
- Must have previous experience in developing and using murine cancer models in a wide variety of settings including SubQ and Orthotopic models as well as in a wide variety of tissues and cancer types. Experience using GEMM models is helpful but not required.
- Your essential skillset must include tumor monitoring using a wide variety of imaging techniques, surgery, model establishment, dosing via multiple routes (IV, PO, IP, SC),biological sample collection (blood collection and necropsies) and tumor cell culture
- Ability to perform biochemical/molecular analysis of tissues and plasma (i.e. qPCR, Luminex) is advantageous.
- Must have a commitment to high-quality work and best animal research use practices is essential
- Strong communication skills that enable the individual to interact upwards and downwards with all levels of management, technical and scientific personnel
- Proficient with computer analyses programs routinely such as MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and GraphPad Prism
- Highly organized with the ability to parallelize multiple projects is required and provide detailed documentation
- Ability to work in a team-oriented and fast-paced environment
The base salary for this role is $110-$145k per year
If interested in applying, please attach a CV or have a well-developed LinkedIn profile for us to be able to assess your background.
We look forward to hearing from you!