PhD student within development of biological drugs – protein stability - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

Are you the PhD student who wants to investigate how surface interactions affects stability of biologics formulations?

We are looking for a PhD student who is eager to contribute to a better life for patients that are dependent on biological drugs and has an interest in working in a developing and research-intensive environment. The section focuses on pharmaceuticals, foods, cosmetics and cleaning. Industry-funded research and development activities and grant-funded research are conducted in the formulation area.

The project is a collaboration with the Department of Food Technology engineering and nutrition, Lund University of Technology (https://www.lth.se/english/), where you will be enrolled as a doctoral student. The project is part of the competence centre NextBioForm (www.nextbioform.se), which offers an innovative and exciting research environment. You will be based at RISE in Stockholm, but parts of the project may be located at different partners within NextBioForm. Their purpose is to improve medicines from the perspective of patient and health care, and to contribute to Sweden's innovation capacity. NextBioForm enables new and improved formulations that will bring biological drugs to patients. The supervision group will include RISE, LTH and industry.

About the project
The research subject Food and Formulation Engineering covers experimental and theoretical studies based on science and engineering aiming to address issues of relevance to the food and pharmaceutical industries, including aspects of production and consumption of food in society.

In the doctoral project you will investigate how interfacial interaction of proteins affect the solution stability of proteins drugs. The goal is to gain understanding on how surface induced aggregation occur and how these events are affected by different excipients. Your doctoral work will include everything from participation in project planning, designing and planning experimental investigations, perform experiments, interpret the findings, and present them in publications.

Who are you?
As a person you are committed and like to drive projects forward, comfortable with high demands, and with a focus on solutions and opportunities rather than problems. Further, we prefer if you are detail- and goal-oriented and have excellent problem-solving skills. You should have an interest in and drive to solve technical problems, performing advanced experiments and a curiosity to understand how processing is connected to product quality, structure and performance. We value a strong intertest in biological drugs and a patient centric perspective. We prioritize the group and our customers, so you should have a good ability to create relationships with project partners and colleagues. Further, you should act as the project manager for your doctoral project and have a high interest in working in a multi-disciplinary team.

We prefer if you have:

• Good knowledge in surface and colloid science, characterisation of proteins and peptides, pharmaceutical formulation
• Experience from one or more technology for characterising adsorption or bulk properties of proteins (i.e. QCM-D, ellipsometry, SPR, TIRF, DLS)
• Skills in laboratory work and data analysis
• Oral and written communication skills in Swedish
• Requirements from us:

Requirements from us:

• You should have a university degree (Master) within with an emphasis on biotechnology, food science, pharmaceutical sciences, soft matter or surface and colloid chemistry.
• Good written and oral communication skills in English

The general admission requirements:

You meet the general admission requirements if you have been awarded a second-cycle qualification, or satisfied the requirements for courses comprising at least 240 credits of which at least 60 credits were awarded in the second cycle, or acquired substantially equivalent knowledge in some other way in Sweden or abroad.

To meet the specific admission requirements for third cycle studies in Food and Formulation Engineering if you have at least 60 credits in the subject of the third-cycle program, of which at least 30 credits are from second-cycle courses of relevance to the subject and 30 credits from a second-cycle degree project of relevance to the subject, or an MSc in Engineering, a one-year Master’s degree or other comparable degree of relevance to the field.

Application
You are welcome to submit your application as soon as possible, as we make an ongoing selection. The closing date for applications is November 30, 2019.

For more information, please contact Per Wessman, Section manager, 010-516 6051, or Ulla Elofsson, Supervisor, tel: +46 10 516 6040

PhD student, biological drugs, protein stability, pharmaceutical industries, Stockholm, RISE