Scientist, Upstream

Akron Biotech is continuing to transform and further its rapidly growing capabilities and is now seeking highly motivated professionals to join our expanding team. This is an exciting opportunity to play a critical role within our organization that is driving advanced therapy development and commercialization with high quality industrial scale solutions. We manufacture and distribute components and raw materials for cell therapy discovery, development, and commercialization to meet industry needs worldwide. We offer an array of highly competitive benefits and perks to our valued associates.

Upstream Scientist

Key responsibilities include:

• This role will develop upstream (cell culture) processes for production of recombinant gene therapies and work as part of a team on upstream process development, scale-up, optimization, characterization and transfer of projects.
• Executes experimental studies to support scale up of processes or troubleshooting of issues at manufacturing scale as required for therapeutic proteins.
• Document study results in electronic formats and technical reports.
• Coordinate laboratory management including ordering and maintenance.
• Communicate findings to colleagues within the group through formal / informal presentations.
• Responsible for oversight of development and optimization of cell culture processes.
• Manages process development of perfusion-based cell culture processes and transfer to cGMP facilities.
• Execution of small-scale bioreactor studies for development and optimization of perfusion processes, evaluation for facility fit and small-scale model qualification.
• Interacting with technicians, scientists and engineers involved in scale-up and tech transfer, downstream process development and analytical method development.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's, Master's or PhD in Biological Sciences
• 3-5 years of experience working in a biological laboratory and familiarity with general laboratory procedures.
• Broad scientific knowledge of cellular metabolism and genetic engineering.
• Strong interpersonal skills, ability to solve problems, self-motivated and an open mindset are critical.
• Demonstrated broad knowledge base in routine cell culture and sterile technique.

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Ability to adapt quickly to new scientific areas and work across teams.
• Hands-on experience with cell culture procedures.
• Solid theoretical background in cell biology and genetic engineering.
• Operation of automated small-scale bioreactors and/or bench-top reactors.
• Writing and reviewing technical documents with a basic understanding of regulatory requirements.

EOE/DFW