Head of Bioinformatics

Mission Therapeutics is an early-stage drug development company targeting the ubiquitin pathway for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease, rare mitochondrial diseases and fibrosis. The Company has built a leading platform for the discovery and development of first-in-class, small molecule drugs that selectively target deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs) – an emerging drug class that is attracting significant commercial interest in the area of protein homeostasis.

The head of bioinformatics role will play a key part in future success of Mission, by building and supporting bioinformatics activities to enrich and strengthen the discovery pipeline, in addition to supporting strategies for patient identification/enrichment based on molecular network signatures and biomarkers. The role holder will provide computational biology and bioinformatics expertise to program teams, working closely with Target Validation and Translational Science functions, in addition to building further inhouse capability supported by a small team.

Key Responsibilities of the role will include

Develop and lead Mission’s Bioinformatics function and coordinate the group’s collaboration with project teams.

Contribute to the identification and validation of novel human disease targets leveraging public and proprietary omics and genetics data and working closely with the target validation and translational science team.

• Represent bioinformatics discipline as part of the drug discovery project teams by providing a broad range of support to ensure best use of all relevant data impacting project decisions for target validation, disease linkage, biomarker identification and resistance mechanisms:
o Proactively identify opportunities and propose informatics solutions
o Integrate genomic and experimental data using established and/or in-house platforms to help refine patient population and responder hypotheses.
o Independently carry out informatics analysis
o Summarize and present scientific results with clear conclusions and recommendations.

• Contribute to the development of innovative data management/integration and information intelligence solutions:
o Develop both bioinformatic tools, analysis pipeline and data infrastructure strategies to underpin focused hypotheses across the drug discovery portfolio.
o Act as a bridge between end users and developers to clarify and define system requirements
o Provide bioinformatics support to ensure data quality and usability
o Identify, explore and implement technologies from open source platforms and vendors
o Maintain expertise in state-of-the-art bioinformatics methods

• Communication:
o Proactively communicate activities and status to your supervisor and key stakeholders
o Generate technical documents, external publications, and presentations
o Act as a key point of contact with CROs, sequencing vendors and software solution providers

Qualifications, Skills and Experience

• Ph.D. in bioinformatics, computational biology, computer science, or related field
• At least 5 years working experience within drug discovery/development setting
• Expertise in data analysis including:
o Next generation sequencing data
o Diverse types of ‘omics’ data, such as gene expression profiling, copy number profiling, RNAi/CRISPR screening, expert user of genomics data analysis tools/packages, proteomic studies
o Solid understanding of statistical analysis principles and expert user of one of the statistical data analysis tools/packages, such as R, matlab, or equivalent
o Ability to independently manipulate large datasets
o Proficiency in common bioinformatics databases and tools, can independently design and perform diverse bioinformatics tasks
• Oncology expertise preferred
• Excellent computer skills including database and software development training/experience, including Python proficiency.
• Ability to solve problems and troubleshoot
• Must be a team player. Excellent interpersonal skills with a proven record of interacting with biologists effectively
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Proven track record of identification and interaction with CROs, academic groups and clinicians.
• Able to multi-task

Benefits

We offer a competitive salary along with a contributory pension scheme and other excellent benefits.