South Korea‘s leading chemical firm LG Chem was offered financial support worth $12.6 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop its inactivated polio vaccine used to prevent infantile paralysis, the company said Wednesday.

With the funds provided by the foundation, LG Chem will boost its clinical research overseas and expand its vaccine producing facility in Osong, North Chungcheong Province, the company said.

LG Chem started to develop the vaccine in 2014 and aims to have the product prequalified by the World Health Organization to enter the overseas market supply by 2020.

“Backed (by the foundation), (LG Chem) will soon commercialize its safe and effective polio vaccine to contribute to eradicating the polio virus,” said Son Jee-woong, LG Life Sciences’ executive vice president.

According to WHO, inactivated polio vaccines have fewer risks of side effects than conventional live attenuated polio vaccines, as the latter carries the risk of its attenuated virus causing polio paralysis in a vaccinated child. WHO is currently trying to introduce inactivated polio vaccines in places with low immunization where vaccine-associated infantile paralyses are occasionally detected.

The demand for inactivated polio vaccines is expected to increase following WHO’s polio policies, the company added.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)