Senior Scientist - Oncology Bioinformatics

Further information

Description

AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven, integrated biopharmaceutical company. We are dedicated to discovering, developing, and delivering innovative, meaningful medicines and healthcare solutions that enrich the lives of patients. The vision of AstraZeneca Oncology is to redefine cancer, redefine our solutions to cancer, and restore patients' lives.

The Oncology Bioinformatics Team supports oncology drug projects throughout the discovery pipeline, from new target discovery to early clinical trials. The global group, currently 10 individuals, balances activities between target/disease informatics and drug project informatics. 

There is an exciting opportunity for a talented and motivated bioinformatics scientist to join the group. The successful individual will be a key member of the team, likely supporting translation group to identify genetic/genomic biomarkers for patient selection for late-stage clinical programs. The individual will work with public and proprietary data sets from multiple 'omic and next-generation platforms, integrating these data to identify testable hypotheses.

Encouragement and support will be provided to help the individual develop specialist knowledge and skill sets.

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Work with translational scientists to identify and support clinical application of genomic biomarkers for patient selection in late-stage clinical programs.
• Apply computational, statisitical and machine learning capabilities to analyze molecular data from clinical and pre-clincial samples to derive actionable next steps for projects.
• Identify and validate driver genetic aberrations in next next generation sequencing data (public and proprietary, patients and disease models) .
• Work closely with cross-disciplinary drug project teams across AZ Oncology UK/US.
  • Understand scientific goals, and identify / suggest informatics solutions.
  • Deliver impactful Bioinformatics support.
  • Work with the bioinformatics group leadership to understand and agree project priorities.
  • Proactively engage in knowledge sharing and peer support to build expertise across the Oncology Bioinformatics group.
  • Conceptualise and develop innovative solutions to enable drug discovery projects to optimally utilise relevant molecular data to support business decisions.
  • Act in accordance with all AstraZeneca policies.

Requirements

Essential

• Background (degree level) in a biomedical/life science, genetics/genomics, oncology or drug discovery related discipline.
• Post-graduate qualification, or equivalent experience, in a bioinformatics / genomics / computational-biology related discipline:
• A Ph.D. in a related scientific discipline, including relevant industry or oncology experience.
• An MS degree plus at least 3 years experience in a related scientific discipline.
  • First-hand experience in analyzing next generation sequencing (NGS) data, particularly in DNA-sequencing and RNA-seq, to identify variants and gene fusions
  • Experience testing and interpreting biological hypotheses with NGS and 'omic data.
  • Skilled in effective communication of complex genomic data to a non-expert.
  • Innovation recognised through peer reviewed publication in a relevant scientific disciplne

Desirable

• Post-doctoral experience in a related discipline.
• An excellent publication track record in high impact journals.
• Experience working in a drug discovery, oncology and/or genomics related environment.
• Experience integrating and interpreting multi-omic data at the network level to uderstand interactions and context specifcity influencing phenotypic class.
• A good understanding of the contribution of bioinformatics to drug discovery.
• Well networked within the external bioinformatics community.
• Knowledge of signaling pathways in Oncology.

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