CJ Bioscience has introduced many microbiome-based new drug candidate substances, drawing the industry’s attention. CJ Bioscience is an independent company in the CJ Group’s Red Bio (pharmaceutical and healthcare) business division.

CJ Bioscience announced Monday that it had signed a contract to take over new drug candidates and their platform technology with 4D Pharma, a company based in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Under the contract, CJ Bioscience will introduce nine new drug candidate substances with the targeted indications of solid cancer, gastrointestinal diseases, brain diseases, and immune diseases. In addition, the company said it would secure 10 pipelines by 2025.

In addition, CJ Bioscience plans to acquire all related intellectual property rights of 4D pharma, such as patients, including that concerning diagnosis and new drug candidate development technology platforms. According to the bilateral agreement, the two companies did not disclose the contract amount.

CJ Bioscience expected the contract to speed up its development of microbiome-based new drugs. The company explained that its bioinformatics and 4D Pharma’s new drug-developing know-how accumulated for over a decade to create a synergy.

CJ Bioscience said it has a new drug candidate-developing platform, “Ez-Mx Platform,” explaining that it can enhance the possibility of clinical development success by discovering new drug candidates and biomarkers related to diseases using its microbiome database and clinical data.

CJ Bioscience plans to complete the detailed data analysis of each pipeline and reflect them on its research and development strategy. Then, the company will determine clinical priority, beginning with the candidate with a high possibility of success, including “CJRB-101,” which won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for phase 1/2 clinical trial in January.

“By introducing new pipelines, we have come to possess global competitiveness in developing microbiome-based new drugs,” a CJ Bioscience official said. “In addition to conducting clinical trials in the U.S. for existing pipelines, we will continue to develop new drug candidates through follow-up studies.”

Microbiome, the combination of microbe and biome, is the collection of several billions of microorganisms and their genes that live in a given environment, including the human body or part of the body, such as the digestive system. The microbiome medicine market is expected to grow to 1.3 trillion won ($1 billion) by 2030.