PopVax is an Indian biotechnology company based in Hyderabad. We are funded via research agreements with the Gates Foundation 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. We are also beginning work on several other vaccine programs.

We are looking for an exceptional molecular and cell biologist to work on our wet lab team across a number of projects, from mRNA IVT to stable cell line generation and maintenance to mAb production.

QUALIFICATIONS

• PhD in molecular or cell biology or similar, or a masters degree in a relevant field with 3+ years of additional experience

• Experiece with DNA and RNA extraction

• Experience with plasmid extraction at various scales

• Experience with vector transformation in DH5-Alpha or similar bacterial strains

• Extensive experience with PCR techniques — inverse, touch down/up, gradient, long amplicons, difficult targets, Taq man, Realtime PCR

• Extensive experience with cloning methods — cut and paste, Gibson assembly, Gateway, In-Fusion

• Extensive experience handling, maintaining, and stocking various cell lines, in particular HEK 293T, HeLa, and MCF-7, as well as suspension cell lines such as the Expi and FreeStyle series

• Experience performing transfection, both chemical and electroporation, at various scales

• Experience with achieving protein expression in bacteria, yeast, insect, and mammalian cells, and (optionally) protein separation and purification

• Experience performing protein estimation assays such as Bradford, BCA, or ELISA

• Experience estimating relative protein expression via Western blot

• Experience with FPLC systems such as Cytiva’s Akta series or Bio-Rad’s NGC line is a plus

We offer very competitive compensation, comprehensive health insurance covering immediate family (including pre-existing conditions), and, most importantly, a collaborative work environment focused on solving the cutting-edge multidisciplinary challenges of our novel mRNA platform.