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| A COVID-19 patient who has spent weeks in intensive care exercises with a medical worker, at the Neurological and Functional Rehabilitation Centre of the CHU hospital in Fraiture, Belgium, last week. Reuters-Yonhap |
By Kim Yoo-chul
SK Holdings said Monday it has invested in a Singaporean biotech firm in an effort to secure patented technology for antibody-based medicines.
The holding company of the industrial conglomerate SK Group invested 8 billion won ($6.5 million) in Hummingbird Bioscience, which has core strengths in the development of novel antibody-based therapeutics.
SK's decision doesn't make the South Korean company the largest stakeholder in the biotech firm, but it is now a "major investor" in the company.
Hummingbird Bioscience closed an extended "Series B" funding round of $25 million recently, bringing its total capital raised through financing activities and strategic partnerships to over $65 million to date. Officials said SK led the Series B extension.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, Hummingbird plans to use the funds raised to accelerate development of "new candidates" into clinical trials and strengthen its research and development &D capabilities.
Established in 2015, Hummingbird is said to be involved in "the early stages of developing" an antibody mainly targeting COVID-19, according to sources familiar with the issue. The Singaporean firm uses systems biology to develop a rational antibody discovery platform that is able to accurately identify key targets within diseased cells, and then engineers molecules to hit those targets and effectively prevent cell proteins from replicating, according to officials and reports.
"We are delighted to have SK join our investor base. Hummingbird is building a strong portfolio of promising new therapies that we believe can deliver very meaningful benefits for patients across a broad spectrum of diseases. These new funds give us further resources to develop our early stage pipeline, and support the clinical development of our lead programs," Hummingbird Bioscience CEO and co-founder Piers Ingram said in a statement.
"Even as the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a slowdown in investing, we are mindful that backing leading innovative biotech companies, especially players such as Hummingbird, to develop cures for addressing patients' needs remains our priority," Heritas Capital Management Chik Wai Chiew said in the statement. Heritas was one of the participants in the Series B fundraising.
SK has been consistent in making a series of strategic investments in foreign companies over the last few years in an effort to diversify growth channels beyond telecommunications and memory chips. In 2017, SK Holdings invested $1 billion in U.S.-based midstream energy company Eureka Midstream.
