Kolon TissueGene, an affiliate of Kolon Life Science, is on the verge of being kicked out of the Kosdaq market.The Korea Exchange (KRX)'s Corporate Review Committee decided to delist Kolon TissueGene on Monday. The decision gives the regulator 15 business days to open a meeting of the Kosdaq Market Committee and make the final ruling by Sept. 18.If the company appeals the decision of the K
The pharmaceutical industry’s employment growth rate was eight times higher than that of the manufacturing sector in the past five years, contributing more to job creation than other industries, industry data showed.According to Statistics Korea’s data analyzed by the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association (KPBMA), the employment in the pharmaceutical industry has been r
HLB said Thursday it has obtained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct the phase-2 trial of rivoceranib to treat adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC). HLB’s subsidiary LSK BioPharma (LSKB) is the developer of the investigational drug.The phase-2 study will be an open-label and multi-center trial evaluating rivoceranib’s efficacy and safety as a monotherapy in 55 patients wi
GenNBio said it would officially enter the market of transplanting organs from pigs to humans.“GenNBio’s vision is to provide living tissues, cells, and organs from gnotobiotic miniature pigs for patients,” GenNBio CEO Kim Sung-joo said in a news conference at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul, Wednesday. To specialize in xenotransplantation, the company appointed Kim, former head of the
“We want to raise our local market share to 70 percent, global market share to 7 percent, and lift Korea’s ranking in medical devices to seventh in the world.”Such key visions for domestic medical devices in the next decade came from Korea Medical Device Industrial Cooperative Association (KMDICA), which is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its foundation next week. The associ
Medipost’s stem cell therapy Cartistem for osteoarthritis and umbilical cord blood bank CellTree have pulled off two-digit sales growth in the first half.According to the company’s public filing on Wednesday, Cartistem sold 8.1 billion won ($6.7 million) in the first half, a 24.7 percent increase from 6.5 billion won a year earlier.The revenue from Cartistem accounted for 34.4 percent of t
Investigational drugs developed by Korean pharmaceutical companies are increasingly winning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s orphan drug status.Daewoong Pharmaceutical said on Thursday the FDA granted an orphan drug designation (ODD) to DWN12088, a treatment candidate for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). IPF is an interstitial lung disease, causing the lungs to harden and lose their
Korean people have a relatively poor understanding of suicidal ideation, compared to Australians, a recent study showed.The research team led by An Soon-tae, a professor at the Communication and Media Division of Ewha Womans University, released the comparative study on 506 people from Korea and Australia. Tegan Cruwys, a professor at the Psychology Department of the Australian National Univer
Korea Pharmaceutical Traders Association (KPTA) said it would open a large-scale international pharmaceutical exhibition, “CPhI (Convention on Pharmaceutical Ingredients) Korea 2019,” in Seoul on Aug. 21.Two-hundred-and-twenty companies firms (129 foreign, 91 domestic) from 18 countries have registered for the association’s sixth annual event, which has invited more than 5,300 pharmaceutical e
It was an obvious failure of a drug trial, but the drugmaker said it was not because of the drug but patients' receiving of other medications that caused data distortion. About 35 percent of the participants used other medicines during the study, the company claimed.This is what SillaJen said first about why it suspended the phase-3 trial on Pexa-Vec, an oncolytic viral drug. It admitted that
HLB said it would request for a pre-New Drug Application (NDA) meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to seek approval for rivoceranib, a targeted anticancer therapy, based on data of phase-3 gastric cancer trial.The company initially planned to conduct an additional trial after the phase-3 study did not meet its primary endpoint. However, it recently reversed its stance and decide
SillaJen said Pexa-Vec, an oncolytic viral drug, still had significant potentials despite the recent failure of the global phase-3 liver cancer trial.Even though the company failed to prove the experimental treatment’s efficacy in a combination treatment with targeted therapy, using Pexa-Vec with immunotherapy showed positive results, including complete remission, the company said.SillaJen
With the likely suspension of SillaJen’s trial on its major anticancer pipeline Pexa-Vec, investors raised suspicion that the company’s executives might have predicted the drug would fail in a futility test and sold their shares in advance.SillaJen said in a public filing on Friday that the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) advised the company to discontinue the trial on Pexa-Vec for
Local biotech shares went down altogether on Friday after SillaJen said it would scrap a global phase-3 trial on Pexa-Vec, an oncolytic viral therapy for liver cancer.Earlier in the morning before the stock market’s opening, SillaJen said in a public filing that the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) advised the company to discontinue the trial after a meeting for the evaluation of th
Eutilex CEO Kwon Byeong-se said he felt sorry for the recent fall of the company’s stock prices, adding that the latest suspension of a trial on a single pipeline unfairly made the entire pipelines’ potential undervalued.Eutilex shares have been bearish in recent weeks. The stock price went down below 60,000 won ($50.51) for the first time on Tuesday and hit a new 52-week low at 52,400 won on
Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization has delivered a written request to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to withdraw moves to exclude Korea from its whitelist. The whitelist is a list of goods designated by the Japanese government to simplify the procedures when exporting strategic goods, including commodities, technologies and software that can be used for weapon developm
Samsung Bioepis’s Humira biosimilar has secured entry into the U.S. market. Pharmaceutical companies are eyeing the U.S. market as it takes up 70 percent of the overall Humira sales worldwide. A fierce competition is expected in America four years from now. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Tuesday approved the sales of Hadlima, Samsung Bioepis’s biosimilar to Humira. Humira is AbbVie’
Locally developed drugs are showing robust sales records in gastroesophageal reflux disease treatment market. Hanmi Pharmaceutical’s Exomezol and Ilyang Pharmaceutical’s Noltec both outperformed Takeda’s Lanston in sales. CJ HealthCare’s K-Cab also jumped up to No. 5 in the sales ranking, recording a turnover of 8 billion won ($6.8 million) only four months after its launch.
MedPacto, a subsidiary of Theragen Etex, is pushing be listed on the KOSDAQ market, making the most of the government’s technology exception policy, after passing the technology assessment. The company said Thursday that it would begin preparations for the preliminary examination as soon as possible and hopes to be listed on the secondary, tech-studded stock market by the end of the year.
Biopharmaceutical stocks remain sluggish in the second half. Stock prices have not recovered since they plummeted in the second quarter due to a series of negative factors.They are expected to remain in a slump for the time being, as the negative factors have yet to be resolved in the second half. Biopharmaceutical companies, which were top players in the KOSDAQ market in the first half-