Sr. Scientist/Principal Scientist, Molecular Design Lead/Computational Chemistry
Scorpion Therapeutics is a precision oncology company founded in February 2020 by a preeminent group of scientists from Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital – Keith Flaherty, MD, Gaddy Getz, Ph.D. and Liron Bar-Peled, Ph.D. The company has raised $270M in Series A and Series B financings led by blue-chip investors, including Atlas Venture, Boxer Capital of Tavistock Group, EcoR1 Capital, LLC, Omega Funds, and Vida Venture.
Scorpion Therapeutics’ mission is to serve oncology patients by discovering and developing best-in-class and first-in-class, small molecule cancer medicines that address large patient segments with significant unmet medical needs. To accomplish this mission, we are building a highly collaborative team focused on the pursuit of novel approaches to small molecule drug discovery. This approach relies upon dynamic collaboration between cancer biology, proteomics, informatics, structural biology and medicinal chemistry – with the ultimate goal of realizing the full potential of targeted/precision oncology.
You’ll deploy in silico techniques to design small molecule therapeutics and you’ll partner with the medicinal chemistry lead to develop hit-to-lead and lead optimization strategies. You’re an integral member of cross-functional project teams to discover quality development candidates by helping define issues, design (virtual) screening and optimization strategies, and drive insights from the integration of experimental, structural, and in silico data. In addition, you’ll identify and incorporate novel approaches in collaboration with the data science team to further enhance our molecular design platform.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Collaborate with cross-functional project teams to design novel therapeutics using structure-based and ligand-based approaches like free energy perturbation, molecular dynamics, QSAR, machine learning and others
- Develop hit-to-lead and lead optimization strategies in partnership with the chemistry project lead
- Design molecules towards optimal ADME and physicochemical properties, in addition to potency and selectivity, in collaboration with the medicinal chemistry team
- Contribute to the development of our computational infrastructure by identification and incorporation of novel tools and techniques in collaboration with the data science and broader Scorpion team
- Collaborate with the data science and chemistry team to help integrate data analytics approaches into all aspects of drug discovery
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS
- Passionate drug hunter
- PhD with 8+ years or BS/MS with 12+ years of computational chemistry support in a pharmaceutical and/or biotechnology environment
- Demonstrated contributions to the advancement of drug discovery programs through the application of computational chemistry techniques
- Proficiency with a broad range of computational chemistry techniques, including docking and scoring, molecular dynamics, (cryptic) pocket identification and characterization, FEP, homology modeling, quantum mechanics, QSAR and pharmacophore modeling
- Extensive experience with data analytics approaches (clustering, matched pair analysis, activity cliff analysis, MPO approaches, data visualization) and tools (e.g. KNIME, Jupyter notebook, PipelinePilot)
- Experience with chemistry toolkits (e.g. RDKit, ChemAxon, DeepChem)
- Experience with covalent drug discovery a plus
- Experience with full Schrödinger software suite a plus
- You are a great communicator who enjoys working in a highly integrated, fast-moving biotech environment
#LI-NB1
Scorpion Therapeutics Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer who strives to create and maintain a diverse working environment. We do not discriminate for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status. Beginning October 13, 2021, Scorpion Therapeutics requires all new hires to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. If you are unable to receive the vaccine due to a disability or serious medical condition, or because of your sincerely held religious beliefs, you will have an opportunity to request a reasonable accommodation.