Computational Chemistry Drug Discovery Scientist

Computational Chemistry Drug Discovery Scientist

Stevenage

LifeArc is a medical research charity with a 25-year legacy of helping scientists and organisations turn their research into treatments and diagnostics for patients.   We offer a unique range of translational science, advice and funding support for businesses or research bodies looking to develop innovative patient treatments. 

Within the Translational Science area our therapeutics team advances research into early-stage drug discovery – from validating drug targets to developing molecules, with particular expertise in both small molecules and antibody engineering; while our diagnostics team collaborates on assay design and development and clinical validation for diagnostics, adding industry-recognised credibility and reducing the time to bring these assays to the clinic.

Job Summary:

We are looking to recruit an outstanding Computational Chemistry Drug Discovery Scientist to join our expanding drug discovery team based in Stevenage. Your focus will be the active support of pre-clinical projects using ligand- and structure-based methods as appropriate, including similarity searching, pharmacophore modelling, docking and QSAR.

The role:

This role encompasses analysing public (e.g. ChEMBL) and proprietary (LifeArc) data to discover and communicate structure-activity relationships and, working as part of a project team, contributing to the design of novel molecules for synthesis. In addition, supporting earlier stage projects, you will be expected to develop predictive models and perform virtual screening strategies for hit identification. You will be involved in evaluating compound libraries in terms of novelty, diversity and developability potential and in evaluating new targets using protein sequence and structure comparisons to assess factors such as selectivity and ligand ability.

Who you are:

You will have a degree in a scientific discipline relevant to drug discovery, e.g. chemistry or biochemistry, and have practical scripting/programming skills - ideally using Python. You will be able to demonstrate a working knowledge of one or more commercial molecular modelling packages, e.g. Schrodinger, Cresset or MOE, and will have begun to develop an understanding of key aspects of drug discovery such as medicinal chemistry and biological assays.

Previous experience in an industrial drug discovery environment and working with workflow software such as Pipeline Pilot or KNIME and visualisation software such as Dotmatics Vortex or DataWarrior would be desirable. Any expertise in relevant specialist techniques such as molecular dynamics simulation, free energy perturbation, bioinformatics or machine learning/AI would also be of value to LifeArc.

Salary 

Your salary will be determined by your qualifications and experience. LifeArc also offers a defined contribution pension scheme, private health insurance, a flexible benefits scheme, 31 days paid holiday per year.

LifeArc is committed to the principles and practices of equal opportunities and to encouraging the establishment of a diverse workforce. It is our policy to employ individuals on the basis of their suitability for the work to be performed and their potential for development, regardless of age, sex, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, disability, marital status, pregnancy or maternity, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief.  This includes creating a culture that fully reflects our commitment to equal opportunities for all. 

To apply please email your CV and covering letter explaining why you want to work for LifeArc to:  adam.rudman@lifearc.org

Closing Date – Friday 30th July 2021