BIA Separations, a biochromatography development and manufacturing company, has appointed Pete Gagnon as chief scientific officer. In his new role, he will drive the company’s new product and applications development, with a focus on the purification and increased safety of products for gene therapy, oncolytic vaccines, exosomes, and more.

Gagnon brings over 30 years of experience in the biotech industry, where the majority of his experience was in the development of commercial purification procedures for recombinant human therapeutics. He was most recently president and chief scientific officer of Validated Biosystems.

Aleš Štrancar, chief executive officer of BIA Separations, said, “Pete’s scientific interests and experience are a perfect fit with our future development strategy and the stringent requirements associated with these classes of products. He has been an influential researcher and a user of BIA’s proprietary CIM monolith technology for more than a decade, and his enthusiasm, practical skills and insights will make him an invaluable resource for our customers and partners, especially in the fast-developing and challenging fields of virus and exosome purification.”

Gagnon is also the inventor of 20 granted patent families with 20 more pending, and has published more than 80 articles. He is cited in more than 700 scientific publications, and has authored a book titled ‘Purification Tools for Monoclonal Antibodies’.