Despite the outward growth of the Korean biopharmaceutical industry, it has yet to develop new global blockbuster drugs.

Korea Innovative Medicines Consortium (KIMCo) President Huh Kyung-hwa enumerates the requirements needed for Korea to develop global blockbuster drugs during the 12th Healthcare Future Forum organized by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) on Friday.
Korea Innovative Medicines Consortium (KIMCo) President Huh Kyung-hwa enumerates the requirements needed for Korea to develop global blockbuster drugs during the 12th Healthcare Future Forum organized by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) on Friday.

An expert has stressed that the sector could realize such goals only when it strengthens cooperation between bio clusters, develops more sophisticated regulatory systems, and invests far more money than now.

"Major pharmaceutical powerhouses, including the U.S. and EU, have built several bio clusters to narrow the gap between basic research and developing and commercializing new drugs," Korea Innovative Medicines Consortium (KIMCo) President Huh Kyung-hwa said during the 12th Healthcare Future Forum organized by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) on Friday.

KIMCo is a non-profit organization established through joint investment by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association (KPBMA), and 56 Korean biopharmaceutical companies.

The organization promotes an open innovation platform for the successful research, development, and production of infectious disease treatments and vaccines, innovative drug development, and their advances to global markets. These tasks are difficult for individual companies to pursue independently, according to KIMCo.

Huh pointed out that the Korean industry’s long-cherished has also been to complete the development of a new global drug, establishing bio-clusters to achieve such a goal.

"There are 25 bio-clusters in operation in 15 cities and provinces nationwide," Huh said. "However, each cluster lacks differentiation, and cooperation between clusters is nearly non-existent."

Citing the organization’s contacts with the European Council of European BioRegions (CEBR) group, Huh explained that in building and evolving bio-clusters over the past decades, the CEBR group also faced similar problems, often working on the same project and finding it difficult to create synergy.

"To resolve this issue, the CEBR Group came up with a way to increase productivity and efficiency by connecting about 40 bio-clusters in Europe," Huh said. "These processes included promoting business agreements between clusters, sharing best practices, and creating synergies for human resource development."

Korea also needs to think about using clusters to increase infrastructure productivity and create synergy, Huh emphasized, pointing out that the shortage of screening manpower was a point that needed improvement.

According to Huh, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has 228 medical product review personnel, no match for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 8,051 and the European Medicines Agency's 4,000.

"The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety needs specialized competencies and more regulatory officials in charge of reviewing and screening," Huh said. "As a state agency, the MFDS should have resources to leap forward and become a partner and service provider to the local bioindustry."

Huh also stressed that Korea's financial investment toward nurturing the bioindustry needs further strengthening.

"After establishing the Korea Drug Development Fund, Korea developed drugs with a fairly long-term strategy," Huh said. "One disappointment is that the fund's overall size is only 2 trillion won ($1.6 billion) over 10 years."

Considering that the U.S. invested more than 20 trillion won into developing Covid-19 vaccines, the industry and government need to think about how Korea can bolster financial investment in the sector, Huh added, calling for larger-scale and more intensive investment.

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