鈥淏ringing a new product to market is never an easy task,鈥� says Marc-Andr茅 D鈥橝oust, Vice President, Research and Innovation, of Medicago. 鈥淎t Medicago, we鈥檙e developing new products, such as influenza virus-like particles (VLPs), manufactured in a novel production platform 鈥� plant-based transient expression,鈥� he says.
In 1999, D鈥橝oust was the seventh employee to join the clinical-stage biotechnology company. 鈥淚t has been a fantastic journey from the small biotech company we were back in 1999 to the 300-employee pharmaceutical company we are now,鈥� he says. Medicago鈥檚 head office and pilot facility are located in Quebec City, Canada, which is where D鈥橝oust is based. They also have a 97,000-ft2 commercial facility in Research Triangle Park, NC. 鈥淎 great deal of my time is now spent exploring and evaluating assets and technologies for expanding applications in new fields of human therapeutics,鈥� he says. He is a co-inventor on more than 330 patents or patent applications related to the company鈥檚 platform and products.
D鈥橝oust received his PhD in plant biochemistry and molecular biology from Laval Univ. in Quebec City. 鈥淭he founders of Medicago reached out to me as I was finishing my PhD. All of the company鈥檚 research activities were being conducted in half a laboratory rented from the Horticultural Research Center at Laval Univ.,鈥� he says.
鈥淎 job with Medicago represented a fantastic opportunity to apply my knowledge and expertise to the new crazy idea that plants could be used as bioreactors for the production of human therapeutics,鈥� says D鈥橝oust. 鈥淭he topic was hot at the time, the first demonstration of production of a human protein in plants having been published only a decade before.鈥� During his graduate studies, D鈥橝oust developed synthetic promoters for the study of gene expression, and was eager to use that research experience in his career. 鈥淚 saw this position at Medicago as a possibility to engineer new systems to manufacture useful products for human health 鈥� a modern way to use the oldest source of pharmaceuticals for the next generation of human medicines,鈥� he says.
鈥淚 was hired to develop expression tools to produce pharmaceutical proteins in alfalfa,鈥� D鈥橝oust recollects. 鈥淚ndeed, the name of the company is...
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