Advisor​/Senior Advisor, Cardiovascular NAMs - Investigative Toxicology

Position: Advisor / Senior Advisor, Cardiovascular NAMs - Investigative Toxicology
At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve.

This is hard, urgent, selfless work-but it's work worth doing. If you're driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.

** Position Overview*
* We are seeking a scientist to join the New Approach Methodologies (NAMs)/Complex In Vitro Models (CIVMs) pillar within Lilly's Investigative Toxicology group. This individual contributor, primarily laboratory-based role sits within an integrated group where in vitro and in vivo safety science operate under a single leadership, enabling seamless translational science across the drug discovery continuum.

The successful candidate will anchor Lilly's cardiovascular safety NAMs capability - crafting, qualifying, and applying sophisticated human-relevant in vitro models to detect, characterize, and mechanistically understand compound-induced liabilities across the full cardiovascular system. Liabilities of primary interest span cardiac and vascular biology: proarrhythmia and ion channel perturbation, drug-induced cardiomyopathy (structural and functional), mitochondrial cardiotoxicity, contractile dysfunction, drug-induced vascular injury (DIVI), and endothelial dysfunction.

The role demands scientific depth in cardiac electrophysiology/biology and vascular biology, a mechanistic safety attitude, and the aim to advance cardiovascular CIVM science internally and externally.

** Key Responsibilities*
* + Develop expertise across, and take primary responsibility for qualifying and applying, human-relevant in vitro models for cardiovascular liability assessment, including hiPSC-CMs, hiPSC-derived endothelial cells (hiPSC-ECs), 2D electrophysiological monolayer systems, 3D EHTs, cardiac organoids (COs), and vessel-on-a-chip models; the precise platform mix will reflect the candidate's existing strengths with expectation to broaden across the cardiovascular CIVM portfolio over time.

+ Design and complete mechanistic investigations into compound-induced liabilities including proarrhythmia, QT/AP prolongation, structural cardiomyopathy, mitochondrial cardiotoxicity, DIVI, and endothelial dysfunction and barrier disruption.

+ Implement and qualify electrophysiological and contractile readouts for cardiac safety including MEA field potential recordings, calcium flux imaging, sarcomere shortening/contractility assays, and impedance-based platforms; adopt emerging technologies that improve sensitivity, specificity, and translational relevance within the CiPA framework and beyond.

+ Apply 3D cardiovascular platforms - including EHTs or COs - for mechanistic studies and chronic dosing paradigms that gather structural cardiotoxicity and vascular injury endpoints not resolved by electrophysiology alone.

+ Serve as the primary scientific resource for project teams conducting follow-on in vitro investigations for cardiovascular safety.

+ Collaborate with Lilly's in silico ADMET Intelligence group to integrate computational cardiovascular liability predictions with in vitro mechanistic data, building tiered decision frameworks for project teams.

+ Evaluate emerging cardiovascular NAMs technologies - including multi-organ liver-heart MPS for metabolism-mediated cardiotoxicity, AI/ML-assisted imaging, and transcriptomic mechanism-of-injury profiling - and recommend platforms for adoption.

+ Serve as scientific point of contact for CROs and academic partners conducting cardiovascular NAMs work on Lilly's behalf, coordinating study design, data quality, and deliverable standards.

+ Maintain awareness of regulatory and consortium developments relevant to cardiovascular safety pharmacology; participate in pre-competitive consortia (IQ-MPS, HESI cardiovascular safety initiatives); publish and present externally.

** Minimum Requirements*
* + PhD in Pharmacology, Physiology, Biomedical Engineering, Toxicology, or a closely related field with l training in cardiac biology, vascular biology, or cardiovascular electrophysiology.

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** Advisor (R5):
** PhD with 2+ years postdoctoral or industry experience with direct hands-on work in advanced cardiovascular in vitro models.

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** Senior Advisor (R6):
** PhD with 5+ years postdoctoral or industry experience with a track record of independent scientific contribution, model qualification, and leadership.

+ Hands-on experience with at least one of the following: (1) hiPSC-CM differentiation and functional characterization applied to cardiac safety or mechanistic questions; (2) MEA-based proarrhythmia liability assessment (APD and FPD detection) within or…