Research Intern

**Internship Opportunities in Biomedical Research**

At our Company, we are committed to be the premier, research-intensive biopharmaceutical company and are dedicated to providing leading innovations and solutions for today and the future. Our mission is to discover, develop and provide medicines and vaccines that save and improve lives around the world. We strive to transform breakthrough science into novel therapeutics and vaccines and our scientific curiosity drives us to invent solutions to some of the world's most challenging diseases. Many begin in the our Research Laboratories, where we push the boundaries of science with the hope and expectation that the medicines and vaccines we invent will lead to better health for society for generations to come.

In Singapore, our Translational Medicine Research Centre is located within the Biopolis, the heart of Singapore’s biomedical research community. Here, we are focused on identifying and validating new drug targets, exploring innovative therapeutic modalities and leveraging clinical studies and patient-derived material to understand biomarkers of disease or therapeutic response to increase our understanding of human biology and to drive a therapeutic pipeline to address unmet medical needs. Our state-of-the-art laboratory supports discovery biology and translational medicine and is an integral part of our Company's world-class network for drug and vaccine discovery.

As an intern within our research laboratories, you will gain the opportunity to work with talented and dedicated scientists, learn from leading industry experts, gain exposure and professional experience working for a research-driven enterprise; and use your passion, creativity, knowledge and collaboration skills to find solutions to challenging problems in your day-to-day work.

**Position Title**: Research Intern, Cancer Biology (Quantitative Biosciences)

**Job Purpose**:
The Research Intern will work closely with an assigned scientific supervisor on a lab-based biomedical research project in the area of target validation, immuno-oncology or cancer biology.

**Project title: Optimization of intracellular mRNA delivery**

Chemically modified messenger RNA (mRNA) are a highly promising therapeutic modality to treat various diseases. Recent advances in mRNA technology accompanied with the successes of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech have generated momentum to this field. However, delivery to the specific target site and off-target toxicities remain to be addressed with mRNA therapeutics. pH and redox-responsive coacervating peptides were recently developed to efficiently deliver various cargo including proteins, peptides and mRNA into the cell. In this project, the intern will characterize coacervates to deliver mRNA and perform comparisons with other in vitro delivery vehicles (Lipid nanoparticles (LNP), transfection reagents) in terms of mRNA expression and vehicle-induced toxicity in cell lines of interest. With respect to toxicity, this could be probed further by looking at innate immune activation which has been reported to be triggered by some LNPs. It would also be worthwhile to explore their mechanism of entry into cells, which is currently hypothesized to be endocytosis-independent, so this could be compared to cargo delivered via dfTAT which triggers leakage of endosomes. In addition, there could be the opportunity to test and evaluate other coacervating peptide analogs, with the goal of identifying an appropriate coacervate vehicle to deliver mRNA in vivo.

**Learning Outcome to be gained by the intern**

Key learnings for student: mRNA therapeutics, Molecular biology and signaling pathways, Cell culture and mRNA transfection, Cellular assays e.g. viability/toxicity assays, imaging techniques, western blotting, Data analysis and presentation

**Qualification**:
Enrollment in an Undergraduate or Master’s program leading to a Diploma/Degree in a Biomedical Sciences, Biological Sciences or Life Sciences-related discipline.

**Experience and Skills**:

- Working knowledge of laboratory-based methodologies such as molecular biology, protein or nucleic acid isolation, cell culture, Western blot, immunocytochemistry, quantitative plate-based detection methodologies, imaging, microscopy, mass spectrometry, flow cytometry.
- Hands-on laboratory experience preferred

**Other Personal Attributes**:

- Strong interest in working in a research-intensive environment
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills
- Have a positive, proactive, can-do attitude
- Keen to learn and good team player
- Strong problem-solving skills
- Availability for 6 months in a full-time capacity preferred

**Who we are **
We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been inventing for life, bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challengi