About Careertakes

👉 Important disclosure: Careertakes is a third-party recruiting platform supporting this hiring process. If selected, you will be employed directly by our client, Healthcare — Medical Research.

Applicants for this role may also receive access to additional matched opportunities through the Careertakes platform.

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Position summary

This is a full-time, on-site Research Assistant position based in Boston, MA supporting a confidential client conducting medical research on gut microbiota and immune responses in type 1 diabetes. The role focuses on bench-level laboratory work across bacterial culture, extracellular vesicle (EV) characterization, cell-based immunology assays, and animal studies. Accurate documentation, adherence to safety/IACUC protocols, and collaborative teamwork are essential.

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What You’ll Do

• Culture bacterial strains, including work under anaerobic conditions.
• Purify bacterial extracellular vesicles (EVs) using tangential-flow filtration and size-exclusion chromatography.
• Characterize EVs (e.g., nanoparticle tracking analysis, electron microscopy, LAL endotoxin testing) and prepare samples for mass spectrometry.
• Culture primary immune cells (mouse bone marrow–derived dendritic cells and human monocyte‑derived dendritic cells).
• Perform functional immunology assays (cytokine ELISA, multicolor flow cytometry) to measure immune and regulatory T cell responses.
• Support in vivo mouse studies: scheduled oral gavage dosing, weekly blood glucose monitoring, tissue harvest and processing (spleen, pancreatic lymph nodes).
• Process human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from healthy donors and donors with type 1 diabetes and run cell-based assays on human samples.
• Maintain meticulous, contemporaneous records in an electronic laboratory notebook and manage sample/inventory organization.
• Prepare common reagents and buffers, assist with shared equipment maintenance, and summarize data using FlowJo, GraphPad Prism or similar tools.
• Follow all institutional safety, regulatory, and IACUC-approved protocols for animal and biospecimen work.

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Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Biology, Biochemistry, Immunology, Microbiology, or related scientific field — or equivalent experience.
• Entry-level role; prior hands-on laboratory research experience required (undergraduate research, thesis, post-baccalaureate program, or prior lab role).
• Demonstrated reliability, organization, strong record-keeping, and clear written/verbal communication.
• Ability to work independently after training and to collaborate in a small research team.
• Willingness and ability to work with mice, human blood samples, and biohazardous materials (training provided).

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Preferred Skills

• Prior mouse-handling experience (oral gavage, injections, blood collection, dissection).
• Experience with flow cytometry, cell/tissue culture and sterile technique, or ELISA.
• Exposure to anaerobic bacterial culture, extracellular vesicle or nanoparticle characterization (NTA, EM), chromatography (FPLC/SEC), or standard molecular biology techniques (PCR, Western blot).
• Familiarity with data-analysis tools such as FlowJo, GraphPad Prism, R, or Python.

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Compensation & Employment Details

• Employment type: Full time, on-site (Boston, MA).
• Pay range: $15.00 - $24.00 per hour. This is the base hourly wage range the organization reasonably expects to pay for this position. Actual pay will be determined based on experience, education, and other lawful factors. Additional pay practices (overtime, shift differentials, etc.) may apply per applicable law.

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Additional notes

• All laboratory and animal work must be performed in strict compliance with approved IACUC protocols and institutional safety/regulatory requirements.
• As a healthcare research employer, our client requires influenza vaccination as a condition of employment.
• This role requires working on-site in Boston, MA. Reasonable accommodations are available for candidates as required by law.

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Equal Opportunity & Hiring Transparency

Careertakes and our client are Equal Opportunity Employers committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. We prohibit discrimination or harassment of any kind. To support a fair and efficient hiring process, AI tools may be used to assist with application review or resume screening. These tools do not replace human decision-making. Final hiring decisions are made by people.

If you have questions about how your data is used, please contact us directly.