Research Technician I​/II — Immunotherapy & AML Lab

Overview

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center is an independent, nonprofit organization providing adult cancer treatment and groundbreaking research focused on cancer and infectious diseases. Based in Seattle, Fred Hutch is the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in Washington.

With a track record of global leadership in bone marrow transplantation, HIV/AIDS prevention, immunotherapy and COVID-19 vaccines, Fred Hutch has earned a reputation as one of the world's leading cancer, infectious disease and biomedical research centers. Fred Hutch operates eight clinical care sites that provide medical oncology, infusion, radiation, proton therapy and related services, and network affiliations with hospitals in five states.

Together, our fully integrated research and clinical care teams seek to discover new cures to the world’s deadliest diseases and make life beyond cancer a reality.

At Fred Hutch we value collaboration, compassion, determination, excellence, innovation, integrity and respect. Our mission is directly tied to the humanity, dignity and inherent value of each employee, patient, community member and supporter. Our commitment to learning across our differences and similarities make us stronger. We seek employees who bring different and innovative ways of seeing the world and solving problems.

The Walter Lab in the Translational Science & Therapeutics Division is recruiting an outstanding Research Technician I or II to work as part of a team investigating new treatments for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) primarily focused on improving existing, and developing novel, antibody-based immunotherapies, and rendering them safer for clinical application. A main focus of our current work is the optimization of therapies that include radio labeled antibodies (radioimmunotherapies), primarily using the very potent alpha emitter astatine‑211, to direct radiation to normal and neoplastic hematopoietic cells.

Additional projects include preclinical drug development/testing (in part with academic and industry partners), studies on mechanisms of action and resistance of antibody‑based therapeutics and identification of strategies to overcome these limitations, and development of approaches to protect normal tissues from the toxicities of AML‑targeted therapies (e.g. via use of genome editing).

This Research Technician role is intended to span both our mouse in vivo studies and cell-based in vitro assays. The ideal candidate will be comfortable dividing their time between approximately ~50% mouse handling in support of in vivo studies, including handling of radioisotopes, and 50% bench‑based and cell culture work in support of our in vitro studies. This balance may shift depending on the priorities of ongoing lab projects.

The newly hired research technician will work under the direction of the Principal Investigator and senior laboratory personnel and will be involved in the following techniques/duties:

• Generation and purification of recombinant antibodies and other protein therapeutics via transient and permanent expression systems.
• Conduct of immunization strategies to raise new antibodies.
• Generation of engineered/gene‑edited human leukemia cells.
• Using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing via lentiviral transduction or electroporation.
• PBMC isolation from whole blood samples.
• Tissue culture of mammalian cell lines and patient‑derived primary human cells.
• Antibody drug conjugate (ADC) cytotoxicity, antibody‑dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) assay, T cell and NK cell cytotoxicity assays, in vitro drug combination studies.
• Flow cytometry‑based immunophenotyping, FACS isolation of mammalian cells.
• Purification, cloning, and manipulation of RNA, cDNA and genomic DNA.
• Standard DNA cloning methodologies utilizing T4 DNA ligase and Gibson Assembly.
• PCR and RT‑PCR, including quantitative assays using qPCR.
• Lentiviral vector modification, lentiviral particle preps and viral transduction.
• Protein gels, immunoprecipitation, western blotting, immunofluorescence microscopy.
• ELISA, antibody biotinylation, AF488 or AF647 conjugation.
• Mouse work including mouse handling, in vivo imaging of mice, and…