Open innovation has become a major strategy for Korean pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs.

They are increasingly going beyond the border to collaborate with foreign companies or research institutes for global open innovation.

Teaming up with renowned foreign researchers could boost new drug development on a new platform and provide an advantage for entry into a foreign market.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical and Hanall Biopharma invest in a U.S. biotech firm for joint drug development as part of global open innovation efforts.

On Thursday, the two companies said that they had invested $1 million in Alloplex Biotherapeutics, a U.S. new drug developer.

The investment will speed up a phase 1 clinical trial of Suplexa, an immune cell therapy, planned for the first half of 2022, according to Daewoong.

Earlier in July, the two companies invested in Nurron Pharmaceuticals’ Series A round and decided to seek a long-term partnership to develop a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Through the investment, the two companies acquired the equity stake of Nurron Pharmaceuticals, worth $1 million. In addition, they secured the right to preferentially negotiate a drug candidate for an investigational Parkinson's disease treatment.

Daewoong and Hanall also said that their collaboration with Nurron would help them communicate with more U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical experts.

Why are the two companies aggressively building partnerships with American biotech firms?

An official at Daewoong said many startups were doing business with various platform technologies in Boson, and some of them hit the jackpot.

For Daewoong, seeking to work with a U.S. partner is a strategy to select a company with promising technologies and invest in the firm intensively to secure future growth engines, the official said.

It could also save the time and effort to develop a new drug, he added.

Some companies seek partnerships with a foreign firm or a research institute to develop therapies for rare diseases.

Last month, GC Pharma signed a deal with U.S. company Speragen to jointly develop a Succinic Semialdehyde Dehydrogenase Deficiency (ADHD), a rare intractable disease.

On Aug. 2, the company also clinched a licensing and collaboration agreement with Japan’s Tottori University to jointly develop an oral chaperone drug to treat GM1 gangliosidosis (GM1).

Both SSADHD and GM1 are neurodegenerative diseases inherited recessively due to insufficient enzymes caused by genetic defects.

As there is no treatment for the two diseases, GC Pharma aims to develop the first-in-class drug of each illness, respectively.

For an SSADH therapy, GC Pharma will receive from Speragen the right to the plasmid-related patent to produce SSADHD protein.

Speragen secured an exclusive license for the original patent from Washington State University in 2019.

In GM1 development, GC Pharma will get to borrow Tottori University’s candidate substance screening technology.

Tottori University secured the GM1 treatment substance screening technology with the support from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) and the collaboration with the National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health, and Nutrition (NIBIOHN).

Others are working with foreign research and educational institutions to develop a new drug.

Since March, Yuyu Pharma has been jointly studying a new drug with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

UCLA Technology Development Group (TDG), which manages UCLA’s intellectual property rights and leads partnerships with private companies to commercialize research, connected the two.

Under the partnership, Yuyu and UCLA will conduct a series of new drug research projects to treat multiple sclerosis and stroke.

Yuyu gets the exclusive right to secure intellectual property rights for each new drug substance developed through collaborative research.

Pharmaceutical industry watchers said there would be more cases of global open innovation in the future and that the move is related to domestic drugmakers’ entry into foreign markets.

“The ultimate goal of new drug development is to sell the drug in global markets such as the U.S. or Europe,” an industry official said. “If a local company jointly develops a drug with a foreign research institute or a company, it can immediately respond to the foreign regulator in discussions.”

The recent development of contactless infrastructure such as Zoom also contributed to efficient communication with foreign researchers, the official went on to say.

“We can discuss drug development without meeting in person.”