Q-Biologicals NV (QB)
Q-Biologicals NV is a biotech company located in Ghent, Belgium and since 2016 a member of the Amatsigroup, France. The company is offering services to third parties to help them in speeding up the development and the manufacturing of their biological product derived from microbial and eukaryotic host cells. The company principal know-how is process development and manufacture either in a non-cGMP and/or in a cGMP environment, as well as analytical method development, qualification and validation thereof, formulation and stability studies. The company also has extensive expertise in the production of viruses and living cells for vaccination purposes. Q-Biologicals is well equipped to perform process development and production using conventional and single-use fermenters and bioreactors and state of the art purification tools, such as (ultra)centrifuges and various chromatographic and filtration equipment.
Within the PERISCOPE project, Q-Biologicals will be responsible for the production of the pre-clinical and clinical lots of Bordetella pertussis challenge isolate. It will focus on developing a production process for the production of this live vaccine as well as the relevant specific analytical tools.
Prof. Dr Annie Van Broekhoven is the CEO of Q-Biologicals and has been active in the production of biological materials under cGMP for more than 20 years. Besides this, she is a Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, where she is teaching industrial biotechnology and microbiology. She has been a WP-leader in the EU FP7 project entitled “Child-Innovac” where she was responsible for the process development, cGMP production and release of a live attenuated Bordetella pertussis vaccine which has been used in the Child-Innovac clinical trials.