Staff Scientist - Vaccine Research

Join the forefront of groundbreaking research at the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, where we're changing lives and making a real difference in the fight against cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening illnesses. Our dedicated and compassionate faculty and staff are driven by a common mission: Contribute to innovative approaches in predicting, preventing, and curing diseases, shaping the future of medicine through cutting-edge research.

A Staff Scientist position is available in the Vaccine Research Laboratory of Dr. Don Diamond in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation of the City of Hope.  The position is available as part of a multi-disciplinary research team tasked to develop a neoantigen-based cancer vaccine for clinical use. We received favorable comments from the FDA on our Pre-IND submission utilizing a highly efficient and fully synthetic poxvirus-vectored vaccine platform that has already been derisked by its use in Phase 2 clinical trials as a Covid-19 vaccine (see NCT04977024, NCT05672355, and NCT04639466).

Please refer to these publications for further background: doi:10.3390/vaccines11091492, PMC7705736, PMC8906816, PMID33257686, PMID31739399 describing the platform and earlier publications using a p53-expressing MVA as a clinical therapeutic in cancer patients (10.1158/2767-9764.CRC-23-0394, PMC8802616, PMC5856606, and PMC5706612).

As a successful candidate, you will:

·         Join a highly productive research team who are developing and characterizing recombinant vaccine vectors incorporating neoantigens identified by proprietary bioinformatic pipelines and test these vaccine candidates for in vivo immunogenicity and protective efficacy in different animal tumor models.

·         Understanding and prior experience with construction and use of viral vaccine carriers of antigens in animal models would be valuable for this employment opportunity.

·         Have experience in tumor immunology including working with transplantable tumor cell lines in congenic mouse models.

·         Have experience and knowledge of human immunology is preferred.