Mediforum, previously C-TRI, said Monday that it has signed for the domestic rights to LMTX, a pioneering Alzheimer’s disease treatment being developed by Singapore’s TauRX. Mediforum will complete the acquisition of the full intellectual rights to LMTX in Korea by the third quarter of this year, for which it will establish a subsidiary company in Korea. It is too early to say if this subsidiary will be a joint venture with TauRX, Mediforum said. LMTX is currently the only Alzheim

Industry June 15, 2020

Glasses that show you directions on a road you have previously never walked, or that present a meeting room table filled with participants not physically occupying the seats in the same room -- these may become a thing of the real world soon enough. When Google first put forth the first generation of a glasses-type wearable augmented reality device in 2012, the immediate question that arose took issue with the hefty price range, security issues and heavy design. The next generation of AR glas

Industry June 14, 2020

Celltrion announced on Thursday that it acquired the Primary Care unit in Japanese multinational pharmaceutical firm Takeda's Asia Pacific business. The deal, worth 332.4 billion won ($278 million), will give Celltrion the rights to 18 of Takeda’s patented drugs in the APAC region that covers nine countries including Korea. Takeda has 12 prescription drugs and six over-the-counter drug brands distributed in the Asia Pacific region. Celltrion said that this global merger-acquisition deal

Industry June 11, 2020

“We must strike the iron when it’s hot,” said Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association Chairman Won Hee-mok, referring to the overseas expansion of Korean pharmaceutical firms. “In more ways now than ever, people are sharply aware of the importance of health care due to the coronavirus pandemic,” Won said in an interview with The Korea Herald. This year will be remembered as a fork in road where the blueprints for future growth took a turn to

Industry June 11, 2020

Celltrion Healthcare said Thursday it will begin clinical trials of its anti-inflammatory drug Remsima on COVID-19 patients in the UK this month. “As Remsima is an approved drug, the clinical trials will directly begin on infected COVID-19 patients,” a Celltrion Healthcare official told The Korea Herald. Four UK health care institutions -- University Hospital of Birmingham, NIHR Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre, Oxford NIHR BRC and UCLH/UCL Biomedical Research Centre in Lond

Industry June 11, 2020

SK Plasma, a blood plasma-derived biopharmaceutical products manufacturer under SK Group, said Wednesday that it has won a $900,000 deal to supply the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with albumin. It is the first Korean biologics company to source pharmaceuticals to NATO. “In order to be selected as a supplier to a multinational organization such as NATO, trust on the technological sureness is of utmost importance,” said SK Plasma CEO Kim Yun-ho. “This deal is evidence

Industry June 10, 2020

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology said Wednesday that it had developed “black box” software for smartphones that would facilitate the tracking of COVID-19 patients’ movements without encroaching on their privacy. KAIST calls it “PreSPI,” short for Prevention System for Pandemic Disease Infection. The idea that carrying a movement tracker in a phone is conducive to safeguarding personal data may sound counterintuitive, but the new system is mor

Industry June 10, 2020

Samsung Biologics shares were upbeat Tuesday, following the court’s rejection of an arrest warrant for Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong. In early morning trading, shares rose nearly 3 percent than the previous day, although the price eased down to 1.8 percent range at close. The chaebol scion is being probed by the prosecution for alleged accounting fraud intended to buoy Samsung Biologics’ performance, which the prosecutors suspect was directed to leverage Lee&rsqu

Industry June 9, 2020

Kainos Medicine completed listing in Korea’s secondary bourse Kosdaq, Monday, vowing to inject more power to its ongoing pipeline developments for Parkinson’s Disease and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome treatments. Kainos Medicine merged with Kosdaq-listed Hana Financial Eleventh Special Purpose Acquisition Company by which it became a listed company on Kosdaq. “Becoming a publicly-traded company is an impetus for Kainos Medicine to add fuel to its on-going novel drug dev

Industry June 8, 2020

Daewoong Pharamaceutical and its subsidiary Daewoong Therapeutics said Friday that their proposed COVID-19 treatment DWRX2003 (niclosamide) has been found capable of removing the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a ferret’s lungs in three days. Daewoong Therapeutics, in collaboration with Chungbuk National University, carried out preclinical animal tests of DWRX2003 in ferrets infected with SARS-CoV-2. In a lung tissue biopsy conducted three days into the administration, the researchers found that a

Industry June 5, 2020

Korean telecommunications firm SK Telecom is tapping the future of digitalized medical imaging by channeling semiconductor and 5G network services. SKT announced Friday that the company has become the second-biggest shareholder of Israeli medical imaging firm Nanox, which is preparing to make an initial public offering on the US tech-heavy Nasdaq bourse, by participating in a pre-IPO deal. The Korean mobile carrier has invested an accumulated $23 million in Nanox, earning exclusive business r

Industry June 5, 2020

LG Group’s major affiliates LG Electronics and LG Display are unlikely to proceed with the first leg of the semiannual recruitment process in the first half of 2020. As of Friday, the two companies have yet to give notice of any hiring plans. Considering the numerous steps that large conglomerates go through to evaluate and sift through hundreds of candidates, the lack of plans at this point of the year indicate the companies are curtailing human resources investment. Earlier in Marc

Industry June 5, 2020

Samsung Display’s organic light-emitting diode display panels were acknowledged for their seamless performance during high-speed transmission, attesting their competency in the 5G network era, the company announced Thursday. Samsung Display’s 90Hz and 120Hz frame-rate smartphone OLED panels were respectively certified “Seamless” and “Seamless Pro” by Switzerland’s Societe Generale de Surveillance, for having industry-leading image blur length and motio

Industry June 4, 2020

Science and technology firm Merck announced Wednesday the launch of Performance Materials, a newly integrated body comprising of recently acquired US-based chemicals and materials firms and its existing semiconductor solutions unit. Merck had acquired Intermolecular, a California-based company for advanced materials innovation in September last year. The following month, Merck completed the acquisition of Versum Materials, an Arizona-based company and a major materials supplier to the semicondu

Industry June 3, 2020

South Korea’s Drug Ministry said Wednesday it was negotiating with US-based Gilead Sciences for emergency imports of remdesivir, a drug candidate that has shown clinical efficacy in treating COVID-19. Remdesivir is Gilead Science’s proposed drug candidate for Ebola, which has been circuited to test its effect on the latest coronavirus pandemic. In a pan-global clinical trial encompassing 73 institutes across 10 nations targeting over 1,000 COVID-19 patients, patients who were give

Industry June 3, 2020