Internship: Optimization of Cell Line Development (m/f/d)

Work Your Magic with us!  

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you’ve got big plans – so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people’s lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.  

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

Start date: August/September 

Duration 6-12 months 

Location: Corsier-sur-Vevey 

Role level: Internship

Recombinant therapeutic proteins such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are an important class of medicines serving patients most in need of novel therapies. The dominating production system for mAbs is a recombinant expression in mammalian cellular systems, mostly Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells, consisting of introducing a piece of DNA, coding for a mAb, into the genome of a host cell and an intensive selection process to obtain a drug-producing cell line.  Cell line development (CLD) is one of the most critical steps in the production of biological medical products. As a team dedicated to CLD innovation, we support the CLD activities by finding ways to identify better cell lines, with increased yield in a reduced timeframe. 
We offer an internship opportunity for a motivated individual to join our Technology Innovation team. As an intern, you will focus on investigating the possibility of implementing protein expression system that allows to uncouple the expression of mAb molecule from the protein expression pathways of CHO cells. You will be responsible for leading the generation of cell line stably expressing the exogenous RNA polymerase enzyme and evaluating its impact on the mAb yield. Practically, you will generate and characterize pools of modified cells and perform productivity assay to measure mAb titer. You will perform single cell cloning of best pools to obtain clonal cell lines. You will screen clonal cell lines for expression of the enzyme using ddPCR. You will carry on a comparison between enzyme-expressing and control cell lines at different scales. The productivity assessment will involve the extensive use of the top-tier opto-microfluidic Beacon technology (Berkeley Lights), automate robotic platform and Ambr15. Data analysis of the experimental results will be performed with the programming language of your choice.

Your role: 

•  You will work closely with our team of experienced researchers to design and execute experiments
• Analyze data, and present findings to the wider team. 
• A strong interest in molecular/cellular biology and biotechnologies,
• Excellent communication
• Excellent organizational skills
• A passion for learning

Your profil:

• Master/Engineer student in biology, molecular or cellular biology, biotechnology or related subject
• Experience in sterile culture handling
• Programming Level: R or Python
• Language: French and/or English
• Ongoing study

What we offer: We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe that this variety drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!

Apply now and become a part of a team that is dedicated to Sparking Discovery and Elevating Humanity!