Postdoc

Description

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com

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Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (J&J IM) develops treatments that improve the health of people worldwide. Research and development areas encompass oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, immunology, pulmonary hypertension, neuroscience, and infectious disease. Our goal is to help people live longer, healthier lives. We have produced and marketed many first-in-class prescription medications and are poised to serve the broad needs of the healthcare market – from patients to practitioners and from clinics to hospitals. To learn more about J&J Innovative Medicine, visit https:// https://www.jnj.com/innovative-medicine .

The J&J IM Discovery, Product Development, & Supply (DPDS) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program helps early career scientists gain the training and experience needed to further their careers while addressing the needs of global healthcare. Postdocs work side-by-side with DPDS scientists on innovative research projects and have the opportunity to present their work. They also learn the functional role of scientists in the pharmaceutical industry and receive valuable career advice from mentors while building a network of professional contacts and developing the skills needed to advance their careers.

As part of the DPDS Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, we are seeking a talented Postdoc scientist to work within the Drug Product Development & Delivery embedded within the Advanced Therapies Leiden, Netherlands site and collaborate closely with various functions in J&J IM (eg. analytical development, API, discovery pharmaceutics, biopharmaceutics, dissolution sciences, data sciences and interventional oncology). The postdoc will interact frequently and in-person with colleagues located in the Beerse, Belgium site, which is approximately 1.5h drive from the Leiden site.

This 2-year Postdoc program will focus on the development of in vitro and in silico models to assess and improve drug product formulation properties for local administration to support (pre)clinical development and further optimize targeting efficiency. The interface will be explored in detail where the specific aspects of the drug delivery formulations, administration devices and targeted tissues are coming together. As a Postdoc scientist, you will operate under limited supervision with a high level of autonomy to transform the scientific challenges into innovative ideas and practical solutions consistent with project objectives. You will be tasked with drafting critical research questions and with the ideation, design, planning and execution of experiments to address those.

The envisioned models are modality independent and focus on the physical and mechanical properties of the compounds in relation to the specific tumor tissues of interests to achieve an uniform intratumoral distribution and promote tumor-drug retention to increase the efficacy. The intention is to create these models from a bioengineering & physics & computational perspective that are simple, straightforward and enable answering scientific questions that support further (pre)clinical development. Ultimately these models, including also more advanced tumor-on-a-chip and 3-D models, should serve as surrogates for variety of cancer tissues and become part of our standard processes in the drug research and development workflows. Both internal and external capabilities will be explored to achieve these ambitious goals.

On-the-job training will be provided by qualified staff. Additionally, you will present data to the scientific community internally in cross-functional meetings, within scientific symposia and author scientific publications. This position will require hands-on lab work, while offering ample scientific leadership and personal growth opportunities through training, mentoring and R&D-wide connectivity.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• PhD in a relevant life/health sciences or engineering discipline, like bio(mechanical)engineering, nanobiology, applied physics, chemical engineering, pharmaceutical technology or biochemistry
• Excellent organizational and communication skills, creativity and a strong scientific mindset
• Able to think and challenge beyond own expertise area
• Experience with local intratumoral delivery and/or targeted delivery is an advantage.
• Previous experience or knowledge in areas of microfluidics, tumor-on-chip, basic biology, fluid dynamics simulation is an advantage.
• Advanced computer skills are preferred.
• Driver’s license.
• English is a must.

Major Duties & Responsibilities

50% - Literature review, design, engineering, planning and execution of lab-based experiments

20% - Internal project management, reporting study outcomes, authoring patent(s) and scientific manuscripts

10% - Design and optimization of in-silico computational models

10% - Management external service providers and public private partnership

10% - Development, training, conferences, internal meetings & symposia