Charlottetown, P.E.I. (January 18, 2023) – BIOVECTRA is pleased to announce that Normand Blais was appointed as Senior Director, Development & Innovation, Biologics. Reporting to the Chief Science Officer, Mr. Blais will be responsible for the strategic direction shaping BIOVECTRA’s pDNA & mRNA vaccine process science program.
Mr. Blais is accomplished in early-candidate vaccine development and has significant expertise in using mRNA or SAM (self-amplifying mRNA) platforms. He joins BIOVECTRA after spending the past 22 years of his career in the Vaccines division at GSK.
BIOVECTRA is a fast growing, forward-thinking contract development, and manufacturing organization (CDMO) solving complex challenges to improve patient care for some of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies. Expansion of our Biologics capabilities into pDNA and mRNA vaccines / therapeutics and Biomanufacturing opens a world of new possibilities to our clients.
Normand Blais’ twenty-five years of leadership in vaccine research and development, coupled with his strategic role in our science program, can offer BIOVECTRA’s clients a significant advantage for their biotherapeutic projects.
“We are thrilled to have Normand join our science team as he will help to enhance BIOVECTRA’s ability to bring emerging solutions and technologies to our Biologics development program,” shares Chief Science Officer Marc Sauer. “We are excited to add Normand’s considerable expertise to our roster and to continue growing our mRNA / pDNA program under his stewardship.”
“I am so excited to be returning home to Canada as part of the BIOVECTRA team and to have the opportunity to apply my Vaccine/Biologics R&D expertise, as we continue to expand our process science capabilities,” shares Normand Blais, Senior Director Development & Innovation, Biologics, BIOVECTRA. “I very much look forward to continuing my life-long passion in finding solutions against challenging diseases and to help improve human health.”
BIOVECTRA treats your projects as our own. We welcome potential customers to reach out to discuss how we can help them to bring drugs and therapeutics to market that will improve patient care and fight challenging diseases.
About Normand Blais
- 25 Plus Patent Applications & 5 Scientific Publications
- Post graduate studies in Functional Genomics (Université Laval) and Bioinformatics (MIT); M.Sc. Microbiology and Immunology (Laval).
- Recently held positions in industry include: Senior Director (Function Head) Protein Biochemistry; Director Antigen Design & Prototype Production; and, Lab Head, Antigen Design and Protein Characterization.
- Key areas of expertise are:
- Vaccinology and technical development of Biologics
- Recombinant protein expression systems and purification
- Viral Vectors, mRNA vaccines, Bacterial outer membrane vesicles production
- Protein Engineering and Structural Biology
- Leveraging and interpreting protein biophysical attributes and analytics
Helpful Links
www.biovectra.com
About BIOVECTRA
We are a global biotech and pharmaceutical CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organization) that specializes in clinical-to-commercial scale production capabilities for: biologics, small molecules, bioreagents, and pDNA and MRNA manufacturing. Flexibility, creativity, process optimization and compliance are at the heart of our method. With more than 50 years of experience, 600 employees, and cGMP facilities in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, Canada we assure our programs advance on time and with the highest quality outcomes.
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