Location: Cambridge MA

About Amgen: Amgen is one of the world’s leading biotechnology companies. Amgen is a values-based company, deeply rooted in science and innovation to transform new ideas and discoveries into medicines for patients with serious illnesses.

LEADERs Opportunity:  

The LEADERS fellow will gain technical knowledge and experience working within Pre-Pivotal Drug Product Technologies at Amgen. One of the functions of this group is to understand drug product performance by studying structure-function relationships of drug substances within drug product formulations. The proposed project aims to gain understanding of these structure-function relationships by solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (solid-state NMR). The LEADERS fellow will employ multiple drug product preparation techniques tailored to the implementation of solid-state NMR to achieve the project goal. As part of this project, the LEADERS fellow will gain hands-on experience in the following areas:

• Generation of amorphous solid dispersions, spray dried dispersions and/or lipid nanoparticles
• Acquisition, interpretation, and analysis of solid-state NMR data of drug substance and drug product formulations
• Development of molecular models based on experimental observables

The LEADERS fellow will work collaboratively with scientists from Drug Product Technologies, specifically within the Synthetic Enabling Technologies Group to prepare drug product formulations suitable for analysis by state-of-the-art solid-state NMR techniques. These measurements are aimed at elucidating the arrangement of drug products (excipients + drug substance) at a molecular level thereby enabling rational design of novel drug products. This project has a high potential for generating presentation-quality data, including the preparation of a scientific manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Academic disciplines considered: PhD Program Aligned with Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Material Sciences

Knowledge, Skills and Attributes Required: Working knowledge of drug delivery systems, extensive wet lab experience, data analysis, willingness to learn about and develop molecular models

Competencies Preferred / Required: Knowledge and experience with solution-or solid-state NMR and/or EPR, preparation of amorphous solid dispersions and/or lipid nanoparticles is beneficial