Major pharmaceutical firms such as Hanmi Pharmaceutical, Green Cross Lab Cell, and Pharmicell are stepping up their efforts to use platform technologies to develop new drugs.

Through platform technologies, the companies either discover new drug candidates or change usage or dosage to develop incrementally modified drugs (IMD).

Hanmi Pharm has been actively making use of platform technologies for drug development.

In 2015, the drugmaker signed colossal technology export deals with Sanofi-Aventis and Janssen. The deals brought attention to Hanmi’s platform technology called “Labscovery.”

Labscovery reportedly contributed to increasing the half-life of protein drugs and maintain their efficacy.

Hanmi also unveiled “Pentambody,” a new platform technology allowing an antibody to simultaneously bind two different targets for both immuno-oncology therapy and targeted therapy. The company also has “Orascovery,” which can convert anticancer injections to oral drugs.

Yuhan Corp. also agreed with Genexine to use a sustainable antibody platform technology “hyFC” to develop a biobetter.

HyFC is an antibody fusion platform technology extends the period of the drug use, allowing patients to take medicine every other week or once a month instead of several times a day.

Smaller biotech firms started to secure platform technologies, too.

Green Cross Lab Cell agreed with Canadian counterpart Feldan Therapeutics to import the Canadian platform technology.

Feldan Therapeutics has globally exclusive rights to “Feldan Shuttle” technology’s application to Natural Killer (NK) cells. The technology delivers proteins and genes inside cells.

By using the platform technology, the Korean firm plans to develop a next-generation immune cell therapy.

Another cell therapy developer Pharmicell has reportedly embarked on developing a platform technology.

“If you own a platform technology, you can strengthen a drug’s function, change the drug’s shape, and develop various treatments,” said a research head at a pharmaceutical firm. “Platform technologies draw lots of attention because they can maximize the efficiency in developing new drugs.”