Industry veteran to head new French biomedical association

Laurent Lafferrère has been named as managing director of France BioLead, a new association for the biomedical industry in France.

France BioLead has been set up to bring together industry (CDMOs, CROs, suppliers and pharmaceutical companies), academics and other stakeholders to promote the sector in the country: starting with 15 founding members (including Sanofi, Merck and Thermo Fisher Scientific).

Laurent Lafferrère is a doctor in physical chemistry and process engineering, and also holds an executive master of business administration from HEC Paris.

After four years in public sector research, Lafferrère joined R&D departments with Servier in 2004 followed by Sanofi in 2005. He then occupied various posts of progressing seniority at Sanofi.

In 2010 he joined CMC Biopharmaceuticals at Covance (now Labcorp Drug Development); followed by taking charge of the Seqens Lab R&D Center at Seqens.

In 2020 he took on the role of director of operations and member of the executive committee, in charge of marketing, sales and global operations, at PathoQuest.