This latest expansion follows the recent completion of its large animal facility and will enable Bio-Quant to offer customers a more complete contract research service offering in the areas of oncology, inflammation, immunology, and diabetes
The company specialises in providing pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo pharmacology, phamacokinetics and toxicology services to support pre-investigational new drug (IND) studies.
These studies enable pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical firms to gain a better understanding which candidates are the most promising and have the best profiles to be taken on to clinical trials.
"Animal welfare is of great importance, and Bio-Quant is very pleased to announce the expansion of its Research Animal Diagnostic Services,” said Dr Bassam Damaj, CEO of Bio-Quant.
“Bio-Quant is the only local facility providing this high quality service to the San Diego community and we will continue to grow our capabilities in this area to support our client's needs. This marks the completion of our planned expansion programme that we have been implementing over the last couple of years."
Last April, the company’s expansion plans involved relocating its headquarters to a 20,000 sq. ft. purpose-built facility that contains a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to accommodate the growing demand for Bio-Quant’s services as well as housing the company’s corporate offices.
"Our laboratory covers comprehensive clinical chemistry, haematology, coagulation, blood gas analysis, urine analysis for all nine species,” said Dr Damaj.
“The advanced equipment used at Bio-Quant allows the analysis of full CBC [complete blood count] with only 15uL of blood as opposed to the 100uL required by most laboratories allowing researchers to run multiple CBCs during their experimental studies without affecting the health status of the animals."
In addition to its in vivo services, the company also provides a range of high throughput (HT) in vitro screening services to identify potential lead candidates.
These include a range of speciality assay services to assist with the development of HT screening programmes based on a range of assay techniques including: ELISA (enzyme linked immunosorbent assays), FACS (fluorescent-activated cell sorting) analysis, protein electrophoresis, gel electrophoresis and cellular functional analysis.
Not content to simply expand its service offering, the company has also just appointed Dr Roberto Crea to its board of directors.
Dr Crea was one of the scientific co-founders of Genentech, and has also founded several other biotech businesses including Creative BioMolecules, Creagen, CreAgri, Bioren and ProtElix.
“We are very pleased to have someone of Dr Crea’s stature joining the board of Bio-Quant,” said Dr Damaj.
“Dr Crea not only brings the highest level of scientific credibility to the company, but also is an extremely successful businessman and entrepreneur whose experience and skill brings a great deal to Bio-Quant.”