The Korean biopharmaceutical industry has continued to show its R&D prowess in January with multiple license deals.
Considering that Korean biopharmaceutical companies signed only 16 license contracts in 2022, the deals made in January accounted for a quarter of last year’s total.
According to the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association (KPBMA), as of Thursday, GC Cell, Isu Abxis, GenKOre, and HK inno.N, have signed license agreements with foreign partners.
However, the four companies did not disclose detailed information, such as the contracting party or the size of the contract, causing curiosity among industry watchers.
On Tuesday, HK inno.N transferred the manufacturing technology of K-CAB (ingredient: tegoprazan), a gastroesophageal reflux drug, to Eurofarma, a Brazilian pharmaceutical company.
However, the company did not disclose the size of the license contract, such as the down payment and receiving royalties and technical fees according to commercialization.
HK inno.N stressed that Brazil's peptic ulcer medicine market is the sixth largest in the world, with an annual scale of about 800 billion won ($650.9 million).
GC Cell signed a license contract for AB-205, a T-cell lymphoma treatment, with Artiva Biotherapeutics, its U.S. affiliate, on Jan. 4.
According to GC Cell, AB-205 is an allogeneic cord blood-derived NK cell therapy drug equipped with a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) that targets CD5 expressed in T-cell lymphoma.
The company also refrained from disclosing the size of the contract, citing contractual reasons.
Isu Abxis also exported ISU 106, its immunotherapy candidate, with R-Pharm, a Russian pharmaceutical company, on Jan. 17.
The company did not disclose the size of the contract, either, because of business and trade secrets.
GenKOre did not even disclose its contract partner.
GenKOre said it had signed a joint research contract with a global pharmaceutical company for gene therapy using the TaRGET (Tiny nuclease, augmented RNA-based Genome Editing Technology) platform on Jan. 18.
Under the accord, GenKOre will receive an unspecified down payment and can receive up to $350 million in milestones depending on the outcome of future studies and commercialization success. The company will also receive royalties on additional sales.
“The purpose of not disclosing the size of the contract or the contractual partner is to secure competitiveness, as Korean companies exported R&D technology and not a finished new drug,” an industry watcher told Korea Biomedical Review, requesting anonymity because of the company’s policy.
With Korean companies already signing multiple license agreements at the beginning of the year, expectations are rising whether the licensing trend, which was stagnant last year, will be able to recover this year, the analyst added.