Acrivon is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing precision oncology medicines that it matches to patients whose tumors are predicted to be sensitive to each specific medicine by utilizing Acrivon's proprietary proteomics-based patient responder identification platform, Acrivon Predictive Precision Proteomics, or AP3. The AP3 platform is engineered to measure compound-specific effects on the entire tumor cell protein signaling network and drug-induced resistance mechanisms in an unbiased manner. These distinctive capabilities enable AP3's direct application for drug design optimization for monotherapy activity, the identification of rational drug combinations, and the creation of drug-specific proprietary OncoSignature companion diagnostics that are used to identify the patients most likely to benefit from Acrivon's drug candidates.
Acrivon is currently advancing its lead candidate, ACR-368 (also known as prexasertib), a selective small molecule inhibitor targeting CHK1 and CHK2 in a potentially registrational Phase 2 trial across multiple tumor types. The company has received Fast Track designation from the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, for the investigation of ACR-368 as monotherapy based on OncoSignature-predicted sensitivity in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian or endometrial cancer. Acrivon's ACR-368 OncoSignature test, which has not yet obtained regulatory approval, has been extensively evaluated in preclinical studies, including in two separate, blinded, prospectively-designed studies on pretreatment tumor biopsies collected from past third-party Phase 2 trials in patients with ovarian cancer treated with ACR-368. The FDA has granted Breakthrough Device designation for the ACR-368 OncoSignature assay for the identification of ovarian cancer patients who may benefit from ACR-368 treatment. In addition to ACR-368, Acrivon is also leveraging its proprietary AP3 precision medicine platform for developing its co-crystallography-driven, internally-discovered preclinical stage pipeline programs. These include ACR-2316, a potent, selective WEE1/PKMYT1 inhibitor designed for superior single-agent activity as demonstrated in preclinical studies against benchmark inhibitors, and a cell cycle program with an undisclosed target.
Our global team operates out of two leading life science clusters, Watertown, MA and Medicon Village in Lund, Sweden.
Position Overview:
As a Co-op/Intern in Acrivon's Data Science Team, you will play a role in the development of AI-enabled methods to augment Acrivon's AP3 platform. Ideal candidate will possess hands-on experience with developing and deploying AI and machine learning methodologies. This is a full-time 3-6 month position that will be based in Watertown, MA.
Duties and Responsibilities:
• Contribute to fine-tuning AI foundation models developed for biology to serve internal goals of AI-driven projects.
• Contribute to implementing specialized large language models (LLMs) for querying internal databases using plain-language queries.
• Contribute to the curation and formatting of Acrivon's internal research data along with relevant external databases that would enable downstream integration with AI methods.
• Ensure best standard practices with regards to coding documentation and reproducibility, for example using tools like GitHub and Markdown documents.
Requirements and Qualifications:
• Candidate must be making progress towards a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Computer Science/Engineering or in a related discipline, or currently holding an academic post-doctoral research position.
• Proficiency in programming languages, especially Python and/or R, is required.
• Experience with developing and/or implementing AI methods, e.g. large language models (LLMs) and protein language models (pLM), is highly desirable.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and organizational skills.
Acrivon Therapeutics is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and to provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex or gender identity, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Acrivon Therapeutics complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment.