Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
BIO WEBINAR LG Chem speeding up new drug development
Yoon Soo-hee, senior vice president and head of the Specialty Care Division at LG Chem, speaks during The Korea Times' Bio Webinar, March 26. Captured during the event
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Logo for LG Chem
LG Chem, the chemical, battery-making and biotech affiliate of LG Group, is improving research and development in new drug development to find new growth engines.
During The Korea Times' Bio Webinar, on March 26, Yoon Soo-hee, senior vice president and head of the Specialty Care Division at LG Chem, said the company focused on developing drugs for diabetes, metabolic disorders, cancer and immune disorders as its main R&D areas in 2017.
As part of that plan, LG Chem has been conducting over 40 new drug development pipelines, investing 600 billion won ($532 million) over the past four years.
The webinar was sponsored by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. The executives of the country's prominent biotech firms ― LG Chem, Samsung Biologics, SK Bioscience and Celltrion ― discussed the current state of the local biotech industry and what types of support the government needs to offer to upgrade the industry's competence against global biopharmaceutical firms.
“LG Chem has shown leadership in its major target markets such as Korea, China and Japan with its drugs including our diabetes drug Zemiglo, which has exceeded 100 billion won in sales among new drugs developed by Korea-based biopharmaceutical companies, such as the hyaluronic acid filler Yvoire, etanercept biosimilar product Eucept and growth hormone Eutropin. Thanks to the outstanding performance of these products, the company is able to conduct a large-scale R&D investment,” Yoon said.
The senior vice president added LG Chem's Life Sciences division is continuing to achieve fruitful results with its drugs. “On March 23, LG Chem obtained an approval from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for its biosimilar of Humira. Together with the etanercept biosimilar product Eucept, which is already released in Japan, we expect to expand our leadership in the autoimmune disease market there.”
LG Chem also designated vaccine products as its main business item. At the end of 2020, the company received a pre-qualification approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) for its Eupolio polio vaccine and is supplying the product to 70 countries worldwide, including ones in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Based on its vaccine development and global business capabilities, the company is working on securing vaccine development platforms that can agilely respond to possible pandemic waves.
The senior vice president asked the government to come up with more preemptive and active support measures to foster the domestic bio industry.
“Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, attention toward virus vaccines and infectious diseases have increased and this accelerates the growth of the bio industry. I would like to request the government to more actively understand the high investment risks in the bio industry and create an environment in which firms can make drastic innovations and investments,” Yoon said.
To give more details about taking the industry to the next level, Yoon suggested that the government “synchronize the country's approval process of new drug development with that of the United States or other major countries so that domestic companies can advance overseas faster.”
Since the vaccine business has lower profitability compared to therapeutic pharmaceutical drugs, Yoon also emphasized there should be more support from the government in developing essential vaccine products.
“Though perceptions toward the vaccine business have changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have put more importance on therapeutic pharmaceutical drug development as the vaccine business requires high initial facility costs but entails relatively low profitability,” she said.
Especially in the case of essential vaccines, the government's support and investment in their development are urgent as we could face severe public healthcare issues when we fail to localize them.”