Co-Founder in Residence, Immune-Related Therapeutics for Paediatric Cancer

Join Us as a Co-Founder in Residence in Pharma

At DSV we’re looking for future Founders, entrepreneurially minded individuals with technical and commercial domain expertise with keen interest in founding, and building a global scale, impact driven, high growth company from ground up (full-time).

You will join DSV’s venture creation programme as a Co-founder in Residence and work closely with Aleck Jones, the Founder in Residence, as well as the DSV Pharma team, using our methodology to spin-out a new company. 

Aleck has a background in child health interventions and mammalian cell metabolism. He has been working with DSV for the past 6 months, creating a new company developing a novel immune-based approach to address the challenges of paediatric oncology. 

During the programme, you’ll work on all aspects related to venture creation in this opportunity area, including working out the optimal approach to solve for the desired outcome, building a team and building a viable business case. Once the new venture is incorporated with pre-seed investment from DSV, you and your co-founders will own the majority stake in the business and continue receiving support from the DSV team post-spinout.

The Opportunity

Although individually rare, paediatric cancers have a large collective impact on health, and remain one of the leading causes of death in children and adolescents. However, drugs specifically designed for paediatric indications are limited: fewer than a dozen novel paediatric-specific therapies have been developed in the past 45 years, whilst for adults, an average of twelve new drugs reach the market every year.

Children are often treated using the same drugs repurposed from use in adult cancer patients, however, these cancers differ greatly from their adult counterparts - incidence rates, initiator and driver mutations, mutational burdens, as well as the immune response all vary. Moreover, chemotherapy, the standard of care for many of these indications, significantly impacts childhood development and leads to long-lasting adverse effects. 

Children have a less mature, more innate-like immune system than adults, which, coupled with the low mutational burden and neoantigen load in paediatric tumours, renders them less capable of mounting an effective anti-tumour immune response. Moreover, solid tumours in paediatric patients are heavily infiltrated by tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs), with few tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). These factors explain why certain approaches which aim to stimulate the host’s immune response, such as immune checkpoint blockade, have been largely unsuccessful in children.

We believe there is a significant scientific and commercial opportunity in harnessing the unique features of childhood tumours to revolutionise the way that we treat  paediatric cancer patients. 

Our Approach

Through our scoping process, we identified three high order constraints - heterogeneity between indications, low expression of tumour-specific antigens, and a weak anti-tumour response. We are developing a technology to harness the childhood immune system and re-target it against the tumour through an exciting approach which we believe is capable of eliminating a broad range of malignancies. Our aim is for this technology to both cure paediatric cancer and prevent any future re-emergence. By solving these shared constraints between indications, we also aim to maximise the platform potential of our therapy.

Our Partnerships

We are building a consortium, including a partnership with Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency, to create a new venture with a focus on novel approaches in combating childhood cancer. You will have the opportunity to work hand in hand with the team at DSV, as well as gain support from industry experts and key opinion leaders in designing strategies with curative therapeutic potential for paediatric oncology patients.

Requirements

Who Should Apply

Essential (must-have):

• You have a PhD and/or MD background in immunology, vaccinology, virology or a related field  
• Expertise in vaccinology and the stimulation of immune response
• (Pre)clinical drug or vaccine development in immunology, infectious disease, or cancer
• You are driven by unsolved challenges, particularly in the fields of immunology, immunotherapy and paediatrics, and have the ambition to work with a team to build new solutions resulting in curative therapies
• You are innovative, creative, and guided by first-principles thinking
• You have clear entrepreneurial spirit and the desire to create (or have experience creating) a company aiming to develop curative immune-related solutions for paediatric cancer
• Ability to learn quickly and work in a fast-paced environment

Preferred (nice-to-have):

• Experience in or a deep understanding of paediatric immunology
• Experience in or a deep understanding of tumour microenvironment biology and immuno-oncology 
• Experience with in vivo engineering
• Experience working with and optimising the delivery of different therapeutic modalities
• Track record of high quality publications in the field, or thought leadership in the field 
• 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
• Industry-specific know-how, commercial knowledge (e.g. strategic partnerships, clinical trials, regs etc.) and strong network within pharma;
• Experience in biotech, building and scaling new technologies from concept to demonstration;
• Commercial and fundraiaising experience from early stage investors/VC;
• Experience in building and scaling a high-growth enterprise (leadership/c-suite roles).

Benefits

Our Offer

By joining DSV, you will be part of a team of operators who have founded companies and led the 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 significant time 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. Here’s what we offer:

• Access to optimised, purpose-built, proprietary tools, resources, and processes to help create high-impact ventures from scratch;
• Opportunity area-specific know-how from our network of Partners and Advisors;
• Up to £250k in investment to incorporate the new venture and develop early proof-of-concept data;
• Guaranteed income of £4,166 per month paid as a consultancy fee until the company is launched and the pre-seed investment is secured;
• Majority equity stake in the new company for you and your co-founders;
• Continuous post-spinout support, including fundraising, commercial partnerships, recruitment, and team-building;
• Collaborative support from dozens of Founders currently at DSV across sectors.

About DSV

Deep Science Ventures (DSV) is on a mission to create a future in which both humans and the planet can thrive. We use our unique venture creation process to create, spin-out, and invest in science companies, combining available scientific knowledge and founder-type scientists into high-impact ventures. Operating in four sectors—Pharmaceuticals, Climate, Agriculture, and Computation—we tackle the challenges defining these areas by taking a first principles approach and partnering with leading institutions.