Company awarded €500,000 to support scale up and industrialization of its facilities dedicated to quality control testing for biologics
Paris, France – November 26, 2020 – PathoQuest, a genomic expert company dedicated to quality control testing of biologics, announced today that it has received support from the Île-de-France region (France) as part of the PM’up Relance Industrie program to accelerate the industrialization of the company’s high value-added service for quality control testing of biologics and to help sustain its fast-paced growth both in France and internationally.
The regional grant awarded under the PM’up Relance Industrie program will support PathoQuest’s rapid growth and will enable the company to:
• Expand, upgrade, and automate its biologic testing activities with a significant investment in laboratory and information technology (IT) equipment.
• Recruit highly qualified individuals at its Paris site with a planned doubling of the company’s workforce by 2023.
In conjunction with the grant allocated by the Ile-de-France region, PathoQuest has also committed to making additional significant investment to support the scale-up of its Ile-de-France facility by 2023.
PathoQuest currently provides quality control biologic testing solutions to more than 50 biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide. The company is experiencing accelerated growth in 2020 after obtaining Pharmaceutical Establishment status from the French ANSM , expanding access for the company’s offerings to include GMP-grade testing of biologics for clinical trials and commercial batch release of products.
“Our next-generation sequencing (NGS) approach to quality control testing enables the assessment of the characteristics of the cell lines used for drug bioproduction and the detection of adventitious viruses in batches of bioproduced drugs. Our testing, which are applicable to vaccines, cell and gene therapies, as well as therapeutic antibodies, are faster and more reliable than standard testing methods such as animal testing. They are increasingly being sought after by the biopharmaceutical industry in order to accelerate development timelines for biologics, notably vaccines, without compromising safety and efficacy”, commented Laurent Lafferrere, PhD, PathoQuest’s Chief Operating Officer.
“Support from the Ile-de-France region provides very useful development perspectives for bioproduction and its associated ecosystem, which are acknowledged as a key area for national health sovereignty. Additionally, international regulations are evolving with an aim to replace traditional testing with more rapid and sensitive methods such as NGS. This rapidly expanding global market supports the growth projections for our business forecasts and the need to scale up our testing facility and capabilities in Paris”, stated Jean-François Brepson, PathoQuest’s CEO.
Additional information
Official publication on Ile-de-France Region website: https://bit.ly/pmup-grants
About PathoQuest
PathoQuest offers biopharmaceutical companies a game changing genomic approach to ensuring the biosafety of biologics like cell & gene therapy products, vaccines and recombinant drugs. It also enables a reduction in the time to market for these innovative treatments. PathoQuest’s technology combines an NGS platform with a proprietary sample preparation processes followed by an automated analysis pipeline using the company’s proprietary pathogen genome sequences database.
PathoQuest has signed in 2018 a strategic partnership with Charles River Lab (Boston, USA).
Based on its technological platform, PathoQuest has also developed a metagenomic blood-based test (iDTECT®) designed to improve the diagnosis of bloodstream infections and fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
For more information, visit www.pathoquest.com or contact us.
Contacts
Mélancolie Spedito-Jovial,
Marketing Manager at PathoQuest
Welcome@PathoQuest.com
Ophélie PHILIPOT
External Communications Manager
ophelie.philipot@comopi.tech