Handok said that it has invested 3 billion won ($2.5 million) in Spark Biopharma, a local biopharmaceutical company, to co-develop SBP-101, an anticancer treatment candidate.

The investment is part of Handok's open innovation initiative, and with the co-development contract, the company has secured product sales and item licenses for SBP-101 in Korea. In addition, Handok said it would also have priority review rights for therapeutics jointly developed with Spark Biopharma.

SBP-101 is a substance that regulates the immune microenvironment and an immunotherapy candidate with the potential for expanding to other indications.

Spark Biopharma has confirmed the drug's clear mechanism of action, excellent anticancer effect, and safety through previous clinical trials.

Immunotherapies show excellent effects, but they have limitations by responding only in 20-30 percent of patients. To overcome this issue, companies have been conducting combination studies, and interest in substances that control the tumor microenvironment, such as SBP-101, have been increasing as one of the methods to increase the response rate, according to market watchers.

"Handok has further strengthened its anticancer drug pipeline by cooperating with Spark Biopharma, which has excellent original technology," Handok CEO Kim Young-jin said. "We will continue our strategic cooperation with Spark Biopharma so that we can develop a new immunotherapy that can resolve the unmet needs of existing treatments."

Spark Biopharma CEO Park Seung-bum also said, "Handok's investment and joint development contract will be a good opportunity for us to receive recognition for the excellence of Spark Biopharma's new drug development platform technology and grow into a new drug developing company."

Based on Handok's excellent clinical development and commercialization capabilities, the company looks forward to accelerating the clinical development license for SBP-101 and developing a partnership between the two companies in the future, Park added.