SK Plasma said Thursday that it would shed its image as a company specializing only in blood products to expand and reorganize its business portfolio into rare, incurable diseases.
The company will officially kick off an investment project for rare, incurable diseases with Tium Bio and Korea Investment Partners armed with the additional capital of 110 billion won ($92.5 million) made by receiving investment from SK Discovery and the two partners last year.
To this end, the company has operated an NRDO (No Research Development Only) unit to secure a new drug pipeline in the field of rare, incurable diseases.
Immediately after attracting the investment, SK Plasma established an organization dedicated to promoting NRDO and an R&D committee, attracting strategic investors, and reviewing new drug candidates for rare, incurable diseases under development by Korean and foreign bio ventures, according to the company.
For instance, SK Plasma selected Curocell's CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor T cell) as its first NRDO project and recently participated in Curocell's pre-initial public offering (IPO) as a strategic investor. It also decided to jointly promote global commercialization of CAR-T treatment as a strategic investor in the future.
"The CAR-T treatment under development by Curocell is an innovative new drug that enables the recovery and cure of cancer patients who cannot receive treatment with existing technologies," an SK Plasma official said. "Through close collaboration with Curocell, we will promote the successful development and commercialization of CAR-T therapeutics to foster CAR-T therapeutics as SK Plasma's core biopharmaceutical pipeline in the future."
Besides, SK Plasma plans to discover new drug candidates by quickly and closely reviewing them with the NRDO organization as the center and gradually increasing its pipeline for treating rare, incurable diseases through close cooperation with partner companies.
"Rare and incurable diseases is a significant field as it can relieve the sufferings of many patients who have to endure lifelong pain because there is no treatment, regardless of economic value," SK Plasma CEO Kim Yun-ho said. "We plan to be reborn as a pharmaceutical company specializing in rare and incurable diseases by continuously discovering new drug candidates through NRDO-centered R&D strategies."
According to BCC Research, a drug market research firm, the global rare and incurable disease treatment market stood at $190.8 billion last year but will grow to $248.2 billion by 2026, recording an annual growth rate of 5.4 percent.