Global biotherapeutics and bioengineering firm Lemonex won a ministerial award for its innovative next-generation drug delivery technology called DegradaBALL.

At the 12th Innobiz Company Award held Dec. 17 -- sponsored by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and hosted by The Korea Herald and the Herald Business -- Lemonex received an Industry and Energy Ministerial prize for the innovative technology.

DegradaBALL is Lemonex’s original technology that delivers novel drug candidates to topical areas affected by illness. Such precision drug administration is seen as an optimal method for antibody therapeutics development.

“DegradaBALL enables effective delivery of various new drug candidates into cultured cells or lesions by loading the drugs inside,” said Won Cheol-hee, chief executive officer of Lemonex.

Existing drug delivery agents before DegradaBALL, such as liposome, micelle and exosome, have had persisting difficulties in maintaining a uniform level of particle size and density of the drug. They also had unreliable quality control when left in room temperature.

DegradaBALL covers these shortcomings conveniently and reliably, Lemonex says.

“DegradaBALL is a next-generation drug delivery technology optimized especially for the development of gene therapy, cancer immuno-therapy, antibody therapy, and synthetic drugs,” said Won.