Associate Director, Pathology – Respiratory and Immunology Safety

Babraham Research Campus or Gothenburg, Sweden

Salary: Competitive

AstraZeneca is looking for a dynamic and experienced veterinary pathologist to join Respiratory and Immunology (R&I) Safety.

R&I Safety is a leading safety organisation that develops and integrates innovative safety science with toxicology excellence to drive the design, selection and successful development of novel treatments for patients with respiratory and immunological disease. We are a diverse international department across Sweden, UK and US that comprises toxicologists, pathologists, discovery safety specialists, respiratory safety experts and experimental scientists. R&I Safety sits within Clinical Pharmacology and Safety Sciences (CPSS), which contains all non-clinical safety functions that support the entire AstraZeneca portfolio.

Are you an experienced veterinary pathologist with in depth toxicologic and discovery pathology expertise to help us deliver safe and effective new medicines to patients? This is an exciting opportunity to join a team of highly skilled pathologists embedded within R&I Safety. The role is broad in scope and offers significant potential for professional development.

As a pathologist in R&I Safety, you will work closely with discovery safety specialists and toxicologists, providing expert anatomic pathology support to multiple R&I drug projects across all development stages. You’ll contribute to the design and assessment of investigative safety studies ensuring timely delivery of high quality pathology data. In addition, you’ll provide pivotal pathology support to AstraZeneca’s new modalities team and develop expertise in the pathological responses of organ systems to lipid nanoparticles and novel RNA therapeutics. You’ll be expected to build effective cross-functional networks across CPSS and Early R&I and actively seek opportunities for collaboration (e.g. animal model development, AI-based image analysis, spatial transcriptomics, mechanistic toxicology, in vivo imaging). Peer review of outsourced toxicology studies, working collaboratively with CRO pathologists to achieve consensus and deliver accurate pathology data and interpretation is a massively important part of your responsibility. For individual drug projects, you’ll ensure consistency of CRO pathology outputs across toxicology studies and appropriate integration of pathology data within study reports and regulatory submissions.

Essential requirements:

• Degree in Veterinary Medicine
• Postgraduate pathology qualification (FRCPath, DACVP, DECVP or DJSTP)
• Genuinely broad cross-species toxicologic pathology expertise with extensive experience of histopathological evaluation and/or peer review of acute, subchronic, chronic and carcinogenicity studies
• Significant experience of providing discovery and toxicologic pathology support and acting as a pathology representative on multiple drug development projects
• Strong familiarity with complementary data sets (e.g. clinical pathology, IHC, ISH, MSI); ability to integrate pathology findings with a range of traditional and novel endpoints and provide contextualised interpretation for project teams
• Highly effective written and oral communication skills with the ability to clearly convey complex pathology data to a wide range of stakeholders
• Willingness to embrace and champion the use of digital technology for pathology peer review and delivery of quantitative pathology data
• Specific experience of inhalation/respiratory system pathology, immunopathology, new modalities (including RNA therapeutics) and animal models of respiratory disease would be advantageous; additional formal training in veterinary clinical pathology also highly desirable

Closing date: 21st August 2020.

Date Posted

Closing Date

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity.  We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills.  We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.  We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics.  We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.