Intern - R&D

Internship Opportunity at United Therapeutics

United Therapeutics is the first publicly-traded biotech or pharmaceutical company to take the form of a public benefit corporation. Our public benefit purpose is to provide a brighter future for patients through the development of novel pharmaceutical therapies; and technologies that expand the availability of transplantable organs.

We seek to travel down the corridors of indifference to develop treatments for rare, deadly diseases. We were founded in 1996 by a family seeking a cure for their daughter's pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Today, we have six FDA-approved therapies that treat PAH, pulmonary hypertension associated with interstitial lung disease (PH-ILD) and neuroblastoma, a rare pediatric cancer. Our near-term pipeline seeks to develop additional therapies for PAH and pulmonary fibrosis (PF). The cure for end-stage life-threatening diseases like PAH, PH-ILD, PF, and many others is an organ transplant, but only a small percentage of donated organs are available to address the vast need. For this reason, we are working to create manufactured organs to address the shortage of kidneys, hearts, lungs, and livers available for transplant. We believe an unlimited supply of tolerable, transplantable organs will eliminate the transplant waiting list and cure end-stage organ diseases for which transplant is not currently an option.

Internship Details

The selected intern will need to report onsite at the RTP office for the entire duration of the program which runs from May through August 2026. United Therapeutics does not provide housing or transportation. A stipend for relocation assistance may be provided on a case-by-case basis.

Program Highlights:

• Professional development opportunities and trainings provided throughout the program
• Participation in our "Get to Know UT" Speaker Series
• Ongoing and formal assessments of your work
• Opportunity to make an impactful difference in a patient centric environment
• Competitive pay up to 40 hours a week

Each of our locations offer our interns full access to onsite amenities.

Program Dates

2026 Internship Program Dates:

1. Monday May 18th to Friday August 14th
2. Monday June 1st to Friday August 28th

Role Responsibilities

Support functional wet-lab work in the Xenoimmunobiology Lab focused on porcine umbilical cord endothelial cell (PUCEC/cord EC) culture and human PBMC isolation under direct supervision. Perform routine cell culture support: media preparation, sterile technique, incubator and hood readiness, labeling/lot tracking, culture log completion, and routine culture maintenance tasks (feeding schedule support, morphology checks, confluency tracking, passaging support as trained). Assist with human PBMC isolation workflows: sample receiving/logging, processing setup, centrifugation steps per protocol, cell counting and viability assessment, aliquoting/labeling, and documentation/hand-off for downstream assays. Maintain accurate records (culture logs, isolation run sheets, QC logs, temperature logs, equipment logs) using controlled templates and data/file naming conventions. Support inventory management for culture/isolation reagents and consumables (lot/expiry tracking, min/max levels, restock/order requests). Adhere to safety and quality expectations (BSL-2 practices, PPE, aseptic technique, biohazard waste handling, deviation documentation).

Minimum Requirements

Must actively be a college student (including rising sophomores or those pursuing a 2-year degree). Students that are ideally majoring in Animal Sciences (preferred) strong interest in one or more of: immunology, microbiology, biotechnology, biomedical sciences, veterinary/animal physiology, or laboratory animal science Must be available to work 40 hours per week, onsite in the RTP Office Proficiency using Microsoft Office suite Preferred : Excel/Google Sheets (data entry, basic charts), basic statistics Flow cytometry software exposure (e.g., CytExpert/FlowJo) Graphing tools (GraphPad Prism) comfort learning new software, strong attention to detail for documentation.