Principal Research Scientist / Team Lead, Protein Degradation - Medicinal Chemistry

Principal Research Scientist / Team Lead, Protein Degradation - Medicinal Chemistry

Location: Cambridge, MA

Kronos Bio, an early-stage pharmaceutical company located in Cambridge, MA, seeks a creative, enthusiastic, and results-oriented individual to join its chemistry team at the Principal Scientist level. As a member of the discovery/medicinal chemistry team, this individual will be responsible for independently developing and implementing medicinal chemistry strategies that effectively surmount complex research problems and facilitate the achievement of key corporate goals – on time and on budget. This individual will act as chemistry project leader for one or more new projects and manage a team of CRO-based chemists, while maintaining close interactions with computer-assisted design scientists, biologists, pharmacologists, and pharmaceutical development scientists. The applicant is expected to have strong experimental skills, good communication ability, eagerness for learning, and contribute to a strong culture of teamwork and collaboration.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

• Requires the expeditious molecular and synthetic design of PROTACs/Targeted Protein Degrader
• Communicate project updates to management team, internal colleagues, and external collaborators
• Coordinate project activities with other disciplines including structural biology, target compound profiling, biology, and pharmacology
• Contribute to the overall strategy and creation of intellectual property documentation
• Seize opportunities to pursue project relevant leads that are in line with the group's strategy and contribute new ideas to the project team.
• Act as technical resource in a defined area, and be willing to perform tasks outside applicant’s area of expertise
• Be able to interpret relevant ADME, PK, and other biochemical assays to accelerate drug development efforts
• Design, implement, and execute medicinal chemistry strategy with a team of CRO-based medicinal chemists in the synthesis of analogues and key intermediates, including:

• Ensuring quality of work and data generated
• Understanding CRO capabilities, and troubleshooting synthetic schemes as needed to accelerate analogue delivery
• Identify key challenges in medicinal chemistry routes, and devise alternate routes to enable scalability and safety in the delivery of pre-clinical lots
• Managing priorities and timelines for deliverables
• Facilitating communications between chemists and serving as the primary point of contact with the CRO

• Occasional laboratory work is encouraged to resolve outstanding synthetic issues, or to assist in the continued development of Kronos Bio’s core technology platform.

Job qualifications: 

• PhD with 5+ years industry experience in pharmaceutical hit-to-lead optimization, including at least 2 years of experience managing external / CRO driven medicinal chemistry campaigns.
• Strong track record of scientific innovation, and understanding of pre-clinical discovery process
• In-depth knowledge of ADME/PK assays and their interpretation towards optimizing high-quality drug candidates
• Expertise in database searching (SciFinder, Reaxys) and modern synthetic methods.
• Clearly demonstrates effective organizational, communication, interpersonal, and managerial skills
• Experience with programs involving phenotypic screens, “undruggable” targets, or selective protein degradation is a plus
• Show initiative to expand scope and depth of technical competence.
• Independence in planning work to support the team, project objectives, and corporate priorities.
• Work together with other members of a project team to accomplish team objectives.
• Demonstrate resiliency and flexibility when confronted with programmatic changes and/or new scientific directions.

Interested candidates should forward a resume and cover letter to careers@kronosbio.com.

Kronos Bio, Inc., is dedicated to the research and development of first-in-class therapies that modulate historically “undruggable” cancer targets. Leveraging industry-leading research into high-throughput screening strategies for chemical modulators of transcription factors and other challenging targets in oncology, Kronos Bio utilizes its small molecule microarray (SMM) platform and extensive know-how in biological assay development to pursue novel therapies against some of the most important and intractable targets in cancer research