The Korea Innovative Medicines Consortium (KIMCo) said Monday that it would conduct a joint investment project to help strengthen the Korean biopharmaceutical industry’s global competitiveness.
The consortium said that the joint investment project aims to create synergy in researching, developing, and commercializing fields by combining the participating companies’ development capabilities and funding power with biotech firms’ superior technology.
KIMCo is a foundation established with the aspiration of innovative growth through open innovation in the biopharma industry, according to its website.
The foundation’s operation committee – launched in September 2022 with 24 experts, including the executives in charge of R&D, clinical development, business promotion, production and manufacturing, licensing, investment, and legal affairs – has conducted a pilot project since the latter half of last year to select and assess investment targets.
Through this process, KIMCo decided to invest about 2.3 billion won ($1.7 million) into GenEdit, a U.S. biotech company, along with its corporate contributors, Dong-A ST, and Huons.
A Korean scientist founded GenEdit in Silicon Valley. Its core technology is a polymer-based carrier platform uniquely delivering gene therapy to specific tissues. GenEdit received funding from many Korean and foreign investors, including multinational pharma giant Eli Lilly and global venture capital Sequoia Capital.
KIMCo plans to use the latest investment as pump-priming water to establish a financial investment alliance of domestic and foreign capitals and biotech pharma companies with promising technology.
“Global new drug development is like an orchestra ensemble where collaboration between pharma companies and biotech firms is not an option but a must,” KIMCo Chairman Huh Kyung-hwa said. “In global markets, interested parties, such as big pharma, biotech, investor, and bio hubs, communicate and create innovation quickly through competitive cooperation. This is also the right time for K-Biopharma to push for multiparty collaboration for innovative growth.”
Emphasizing that the recent investment is the first successful collaboration pushed by allied intelligence through corporate cooperation in the domestic biopharma industry, Huh said, “KIMCO will accelerate innovation through industrial collaboration by expanding this project.”
KIMCo is a nonprofit foundation established by joint contribution from 56 biopharma companies and the Korea Pharmaceutical and the Bio-pharma Manufacturers Association (KPBMA) in August 2020. As of February, it partnered with 11 collaborating agencies, expanding its business domain.
The foundation is speeding up to build a platform that conducts projects difficult to tackle by individual companies by concentrating the biopharma industry’s resources and capabilities. This year, it plans to make two joint investments in developing new global drugs. In addition, it is recruiting and assessing another biotech and fixing an investment plan around late June.