PathoQuest 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 bio produced drugs. Our testing, which is 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 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 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