ABOUT THE ROLE

At DSV we’re looking for future Founders, entrepreneurially minded individuals with industry-specific technical and commercial domain expertise eager to solve urgent unmet challenges through venture building.

You will be  joining a newly incorporated company as a Co-Founder, working closely with Dr. Loïc Roux, who has been building the company OligoTune through DSV’s venture creation programme as a Founder-in-Residence. Over the last 10 months, Loïc has worked with DSV, devising and de-risking a novel RNA-based approach to overcome immune suppression in the tumour microenvironment. This venture is now close to being launched, and once incorporated with pre-seed investment from DSV, the co-founders will own the majority stake in the business and continue receiving support from the DSV team post-spinout. By joining Loïc at this stage, you will be driving all stages of early company growth, with a focus on tumour biology, immunology and pre-clinical development. In addition, you will be teamed up with our Venture Partner for this opportunity,  Dr. Stevel Powell, alongside a growing scientific advisory board.

THE OPPORTUNITY AREA

Immunotherapies, especially antibody-based immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and CAR-T cell therapy have revolutionised cancer treatment with incredible results in a subset of solid tumours and in blood cancers, respectively. Despite this widely recognised success and paradigm shift in cancer treatment, these therapies still only increase median patient survival by limited degrees, often by only 10-20% vs. chemotherapies, or they only work in selected patient subsets with variable predictability. In addition, the development of resistance mechanisms, such as enhanced immune suppression, is frequent, as a result of selective pressure on the cancer to evade this method of detection by the immune system. This leads to therapeutic resistance initially and, later, recurrence. We are still far from enabling immunotherapies to work across all cancers, or in all patients. 

Immune suppression is caused by a variety of mechanisms within the tumour microenvironment (TME) of solid tumours, and is a well-known cause for failure of ICIs. The lack of TME-specific cell markers means that targeted approaches (e.g. to inhibit or deplete TME cell types) incur significant autoimmune-like side effects on the same cells in other parts of the body, rendering these therapies intolerable or unusable in a substantial proportion of patients – an issue that typically compounds with combinatorial immunotherapies.

WHAT WE ARE BUILDING

In collaboration with our partner Cancer Research Horizons, we are seeking to build the ‘holy grail’ company,  solving  these above challenges by simultaneously reprogramming multiple problematic cell types in the tumour microenvironment, while preventing systemic toxicities associated with current treatments.  We believe we can build technology that can revert the immune suppressive environment of solid tumours and transform them into a susceptible state where the full power of ICIs can be unleashed — even in patients who would otherwise not respond (or be eligible for) conventional ICI therapies.

The collaboration with Cancer Research Horizons Therapeutic Innovation brings a highly-skilled team of scientific leaders and hands-on experts to drive the creation of this venture and realise a streamlined pathway for this therapeutic approach to the clinic. DSV will provide ongoing support in venture creation and growth throughout the process, and experimental work will be supported through in-kind contributions at Cancer Research Horizons’ state-of-the-art research facilities in Cambridge, UK.

We are looking for a passionate and motivated co-founder with strong scientific expertise and track-record in immunology or immuno-oncology, to drive forward the science of this early-stage biotech. The successful candidate will co-lead this company and be a key player in driving the company vision, strategy and market positioning,  as well as in conducting and overseeing research and development activities. Key roles will include:

• Providing scientific leadership and expertise in immunology and immuno-oncology, guiding the strategic direction of research and development efforts to advance the company's scientific objectives;
• Collaborating with the co-founder and broader team to shape the company's vision, strategy, and market positioning, leveraging deep immunological knowledge to identify opportunities and drive innovation;
• Overseeing and actively participating in research and development activities by:
• Designing, refining and optimising the experimental work plan to ensure successful execution and generation of high-quality scientific data;
• Orchestrating the development of cutting-edge oligonucleotide therapeutics for critical in vitro and ex vivo translational studies in order to assess efficacy, toxicology and PK/PD profiles of those drugs in the context of our technology;
• Systematically screening and defining a target selection pipeline
• Developing in vivo biodistribution and efficacy study plans and overseeing these studies;
• Guiding the development and integration of new assays and technologies, to continuously improve our technology;
• Crafting compelling data packages and presentations for investor conversations;
• Taking responsibility for the financial planning, resource allocation, and management of projects and contractual research;
• Cultivating robust relations with strategic partners and collaborators, suppliers and organisations to ensure accelerated and co-ordinated translational research;
• Identifying, developing, and safeguarding novel intellectual property, ensuring the protection and commercialisation of valuable innovations;
• Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and standards relevant to immunology and immuno-oncology 
• Identifying and mitigating risks, making informed decisions based on scientific evidence and company considerations, and adapting strategies as needed 

Overall, the co-founder will play a pivotal role in shaping the scientific direction, growth, and success of the company, driving forward the science of immunology and immuno-oncology to make meaningful contributions to patients' lives.

Requirements

WHO SHOULD APPLY

Essential (must-have):

• You have a PhD and/or MD background in immunology or immuno-oncology. 
• You are driven by unsolved challenges in medicine, especially oncology and immunotherapy, and have the ambition to work with a team to build new solutions resulting in curative therapies
• You have deep hands-on experience in functional immunological assays, particularly with tumour microenvironment immune cell types (ie. T cells, Tregs, macrophages, others)
• A deep understanding of cancer immunotherapy mechanisms and associated challenges at the biological, clinical, technical, regulatory and competitive levels.
• Drug discovery or (pre-)clinical development expertise
• Target identification and validation applied to immuno-oncology
• High level of organisational skills, with the ability to manage a broad range of tasks simultaneously and under pressure
• Capable of critical thinking and a high level of attention to detail
• Excellent communication skills
• Organised and hard-working, with a strong eye for detail and able to work as part of a team
• Ability to learn quickly and work in a fast-paced environment
• Deep biological understanding of immune cell biology, particularly immune cells present within the tumour microenvironment
• You are innovative, creative, and guided by first-principles thinking
• You have clear entrepreneurial spirit (demonstrated through impactful innovation) and the desire to create a company developing solutions for challenging cancers . 

Preferred (nice-to-have):

• Bioinformatics and data analysis skills
• Track record of high quality publications in the field, or thought leadership in the field 
• High level industry experience in either pharma, biotech, scientific start-ups, life sciences consulting, life sciences VC, or have previously been an inventor/contributor on patents, etc. 
• Fundraising and commercial expertise, particularly in a VC setting

Benefits

OUR OFFER:

By joining DSV, you’ll be joining a team of operators who have founded companies and led translation of science at some of the most respected universities, charities, funds and government agencies. 2/3 of the team have founded or led a company at C-suite and 65% have a PhD. Our team dedicate several hours every week to each Founder or founding team to provide tailored guidance, resources and feedback covering every aspect of what it takes to successfully launch a new venture from both the tech and commercial perspectives:

• We provide optimised, purpose-built, proprietary tools, resources and processes to help create high-impact ventures from scratch, using our venture creation methodology. 
• We draw on opportunity area specific know-how provided by our network of Partners and Advisors;
• We provide £250k launch investment (subject to  Investment Committee approval) to incorporate the new venture and develop early proof-of-concept data that’s needed to attract high profile VCs as well as non-dilutive grant funding. We provide guaranteed income of £4,166 per month paid to each Founder-in-Residence as a consultancy fee until the company is launched and the pre-seed investment is secured;
• You and the Founder-in-Residence, together with any additional co-founders, will own a majority equity stake in the company;
• We provide continuous support after post spin-out, including fundraising, commercial partnerships, recruitment and team-building (amongst other things); plus
• There are dozens of Founders currently at DSV across sectors working collaboratively and supporting one another - a unique resource to draw on.

WHO YOU’LL BE JOINING:

You will be joining Dr. Loïc Roux, an accomplished scientist whose expertise sits within biotechnology, drug discovery and development, pharmacokinetic and translational science with a focus on design, manufacture, formulation and pre-clinical development of nucleic acid therapeutics. His experience comes from prestigious institutions in the nucleic acid field including The RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Med School and Oxford University, where he pushed forward research programs in neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases. After a position as principal scientist at PepGen Ltd promoting a peptide delivery platform for nucleic acid delivery, he contributed to building and establishing NATA, a new UKRI initiative aiming to promote the development of nucleic acid therapeutics. He then moved back to industry as Director of Lead Development for OchreBio, a Phenomics-led RNA medicines company developing the next-generation of RNA therapeutics for chronic liver diseases where he built oligonucleotide and new modalities chemistry capabilities, alongside efficacy and toxicity biology capabilities, to collaborate on programs including target screens, translational model development from primary cells to human organs, delivery methodology for specific cell types including HCC cancer cells, and led innovation programs for IP generation and scientific strategy.

ABOUT DSV

Deep Science Ventures is creating a future in which both humans and the planet can thrive. 

We use our unique venture creation process to create, spin-out and invest into science companies, combining available scientific knowledge and founder-type scientists into high-impact ventures. 

We operate in 4 sectors: Pharmaceuticals, Climate, Agriculture and Computation, tackling the challenges defining those areas by taking a first principles approach and partnering with leading institutions.