Research Leader (In-vitro Pharmacology, Exploratory Sciences), London

The role

You will lead a team of biologists in Exploratory Sciences to build and lead in vitro pharmacology strategy. You will design screening cascades for new therapeutic modalities and use AI-driven workflows to drive drug discovery.

What you will do

• Set the in vitro pharmacology vision for exploratory programmes
• Assess the tractability of new modalities against challenging targets
• Turn therapeutic concepts into rigorous screening cascades
• Lead the design of biochemical and biophysical screening cascades
• Develop quantitative assays covering binding kinetics and functional pathways
• Work with medicinal chemistry and DMPK to drive SAR and compound de-risking
• Set data quality, ontology and QC standards for ML-ready data
• Champion the use of LLM agentic workflows
• Work with ML and engineering teams on Platform builds
• Lead a team of Research and Senior Research Investigators

Required qualifications

• PhD or equivalent industrial/research experience in Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Cell Biology or a related discipline
• Significant years in biotech or pharma drug discovery
• Expert knowledge of in vitro pharmacology and biophysics
• Experience designing robust screening cascades from Target ID through Hit-to-Lead and Lead Optimisation
• Hands-on experience with one or more novel modalities (e.g. TPD, molecular glues, peptides, induced proximity)
• Proven experience leading and developing scientists
• Proven experience managing CRO studies
• Experience with, or clear enthusiasm for, LLM agentic workflows, in silico hypothesis building and data-driven discovery
• Highly collaborative, agile, and motivated by a fast-moving, interdisciplinary environment
• Effective communication across a broad interdisciplinary team

Nice to have

• Experience validating virtual screens, de novo designs or ML-predicted binders
• Experience with lab automation and high-throughput data infrastructure
• Scripting or data analysis skills (e.g. Python, R)
• Experience building agents or prompts for scientific workflows
• Track record of authorship of relevant scientific manuscripts, patents etc

About the company

Isomorphic Labs (IsoLabs) was launched in 2021 to advance human health by building on and beyond the Nobel-winning AlphaFold system. The company uses AI to model complex biological phenomena to help design novel molecules and develop innovative medicines.