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ERA Plantech announces the appointment of François Arcand as CEO

By 30 de November de 2004November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 30.11.2004

ERA Plantech announces the appointment of François Arcand as CEO

During the Spanish International Biotechnology Fair, Biospain 2004, announced the appointment of François Arcand as chief executive officer. According to the representative of the company board of directors, Luis Ruiz-Ávila, "As an experienced international CEO, François Arcand will place our company in the international league of biopharmaceutical production".

ERA Plantech, a biotech enterprise and spin-off from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, Spanish Research Council) with its facilities in the CIDEM-PCB bioincubator at the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB, Barcelona Science Park), applies in-house technology (ZeraTM) to improve the manufacturing productivity of plant-based pharmaceutical products and other protein-based products of high added value. ZeraTM assembles protein bodies in plant cells to accumulate recombinant products, thereby facilitating their extraction.

François Arcand believes that, “with ZeraTM drug manufacturing will be easier and less costly. The discoveries of the team directed by the CSIC researcher Dolors Ludevid are of particular interest because of their simplicity and quality”. The ZeraTM, created by these researchers and developed in ERA, will be presented in the Conference on Plant-made Pharmaceuticals in Montreal, to be held from 30 January to 2 February 2005.

François Arcand completed his MBA in the Executive Programme of the John Molson School of Business (Concordia University, Montréal). He is the co-founder of Medicago Inc., a company devoted to the production of plant proteins with its head offices in the city of Quebec (Canada) and is president of the Society for Moleculture, a non-profit making organization that brings together enterprises and institutions interested in using plants as factories ().