PathoQuest Appoints Colette Côté as Chief Portfolio Officer and General Manager of the Company’s U.S. Subsidiary
WAYNE, PA, and PARIS, FRANCE – March 18, 2021 – PathoQuest, a pioneer in the development and application of novel Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)-based testing solutions for the biologics industry, today announced the appointment of Colette Côté, Ph.D. as Chief Portfolio Officer and General Manager of PathoQuest’s U.S. subsidiary located in Wayne, PA. Dr. Côté’s expertise and long history of innovating, developing, and applying tailored NGS-based assays to the biopharma biosafety testing space will further drive the expansion and growth of PathoQuest’s NGS-based services portfolio within the North American market.
As U.S. General Manager and a member of PathoQuest’s leadership team, Dr. Côté will report directly to Jean-François Brepson, CEO of PathoQuest with the immediate responsibilities of completing the buildout and certification of the company’s new Wayne facility. This facility will begin offering GMP-level NGS testing services later in 2021. In the dual role of Chief Portfolio Officer, Dr. Côté will develop and refine an expanded portfolio of NGS-based biosafety testing services to further meet the emerging needs of the biopharmaceutical and bioproduction industry.
“I am very excited for this opportunity to advance PathoQuest’s NGS-based solutions and further ensure the safety of biologics entering the North American market,” stated Colette Côté, PathoQuest’s Chief Portfolio Officer and U.S. General Manager. “NGS-based applications, and more importantly, their acceptance by the regulatory agencies, is growing at an incredibly rapid pace. The expansion of PathoQuest in its U.S. facility in Wayne strategically places PathoQuest in a position to meet and exceed the growing needs of the biopharma market.”
“We are proud to welcome Colette, a renowned NGS expert in the biopharmaceutical industry,” commented PathoQuest’s CEO Jean-Francois Brepson. “The strategic vision and scientific expertise of Colette will bring our NGS-based biologics testing business to the next stage and will help us expand rapidly in the fast-growing US market.” .
Prior to joining PathoQuest, Dr. Côté was Director and Head of NGS R&D Testing Services at MilliporeSigma with responsibilities for overseeing MilliporeSigma’s global NGS operations for the testing services business. This included being integral to the development of a wide range of novel NGS applications over the past 13 years. As a part of this previous role, Dr. Côté worked closely with key stakeholders in the industry and has spoken as a key opinion leader in consortiums and conferences to highlight the advantages of NGS in this field. This vast experience, ranging from the initial build-out of an NGS laboratory focused on biosafety testing, to assay development and deployment to meet industry and regulatory expectations worldwide, has been pivotal to the advancement of the use of NGS technology in this field. Dr. Côté’s experience also includes the development of novel therapeutics and applications at several small start-up companies. Dr. Côté received a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry from Brown University and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Genetics and Biochemistry Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).