PopVax

About PopVax

PopVax is an Indian biotechnology company based in Hyderabad, with a primarily remote US subsidiary nominally based in New York. Our work is funded via research agreements with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (India) and Vitalik Buterin’s biosecurity company Balvi. For the past year, we have been building a novel second-generation mRNA platform for low-cost broadly-protective vaccines via computationally-driven antigen design, starting with an open-source booster vaccine candidate that is intended to protect against the entire sarbecovirus species and, if things go well, the betacoronavirus genus, including current and future strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19.

Our team of 35 researchers and senior manufacturing leaders includes experts in antigen design, mRNA sequence optimization and synthesis, and nucleic acid delivery from top Indian and North American research institutions, including CCMB, CDFD, IIT Delhi, IAVI, Harvard, Scripps, and UBC, as well as vaccine & biologics production veterans from companies including Sanofi, Biocon, Panacea Biotec and Biological E. The smaller scientific team for our US-based subsidiary, PopVax North America, is led by Moderna’s first Director of Chemistry, and includes several leading practitioners of de novo computationally-driven rational protein design for novel vaccine immunogens.

Most of our scientific staff work out of our R&D labs in Hyderabad, and we are in the process of building out GMP manufacturing for clinical doses nearby. We are aggressively hiring for R&D roles, in particular for computational protein design, machine learning, and nucleic acid delivery chemistry. We offer very competitive compensation, comprehensive health insurance extendable to family (including pre-existing conditions), and, most importantly, a collaborative work environment focused on solving the cutting-edge multidisciplinary challenges posed by this new class of biopharmaceutical platform.

We believe it is imperative that we have indigenous next-generation pharmaceutical technologies — our own research and development, not merely the means of production — in India. Come work with us and do truly innovative R&D work to build the future of vaccines and therapeutics, not just matching Moderna, BioNTech, and the rest, but leapfrogging them on the way to a next-generation nucleic acid platform. We believe Indian scientists can more than hold their own against the West, and we intend to empower our scientists like no other company in this country ever has on our way to making Hyderabad the new global capital of the life sciences.

Feel free to reach out to us via email (contact@popvax.com) or visit our website for more information.