CARTOGRAPHY BIOSCIENCES

About the start-up

Cartography Biosciences is a growing early-stage therapeutics company founded by Kevin Parker, Howard Chang, and Ansu Satpathy, inspired by work from top genomics laboratories at Stanford University. The company launched operations in 2022 with initial investor funding in support of advancing a pipeline of therapeutics designed to broaden the reach of next-generation cancer therapies, and to conduct a breadth of discovery programs designed to identify novel, best-in-class target antigens across a range of cancer indications.

Project Title

BINDER DISCOVERY AND ANTIGEN TARGETING IN CANCER THERAPEUTICS

Project summary

Internships at Cartography are an opportunity for students to be exposed to world class scientific research in a collaborative start-up environment. Biotech is one of many examples of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. Students will be engaged in various research activities that are part of a drug discovery workflow. Specific activities may include any or all of the following:

• Identify a specific scientific question or problem.

• Survey of industry standard procedures and review of relevant literature.

• Experimental design: detailed descriptions of scientific methodology and documentation.

• Binder discovery of antibody candidates: introduction to immunization campaigns, phage display, yeast display and targeted mutagenesis, computational methods.

• Binder characterization: BLI protein interaction, protease activity peptide substrate assay, ELISA, epitope mapping.

• Binder optimization: affinity maturation (phage display, yeast display, computational design).

RESponsibility

• Molecular cloning techniques and high throughput cloning.

• Recombinant antibody production: mammalian cell culture, expression, purification.

• Antibody format testing: bispecific formats, ADCs, multispecific formats, novel geometries, 1+1, 2+1, bi-epitopic, tri-epitopic.

• Collaboration and assistance with functional assay groups.

• Preparation of a slide deck presentation summarizing work.

• Presentation to the company at the conclusion of internship.

About the candidate

Pluses

Pursuing a degree in Molecular biology, Protein Engineering, Antibody Therapeutics or a related field.

Basic lab skills, familiarity with basic immunology, Benchling experience.