South Korean pharmaceutical giant Celltrion said Thursday that the company’s COVID-19 antibody treatment has won an emergency approval from the Brazilian government. According to Celltrion, the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency gave emergency use authorization to the company’s COVID-19 treatment Regkirona, or CT-P59. The approval was based on results from all three phases of the clinical study of COVID-19 treatment Rekirona, as well as preclinical studies that suggest the effic

GC Pharma on Thursday reported positive top-line results from the phase 3 clinical trial of its immunoglobulin product GC5107. The clinical study results have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Immunology, the company said. The phase 3 study was conducted on 49 patients who were diagnosed with primary immunodeficiency. The patients aged between 3-70 received infusions of GC5107 doses every 21 or 28 days for 12 months at 17 medical institutions in the US and Canada. Th

South Korean pharmaceutical giant Celltrion is pushing for a broader use of its COVID-19 treament, Regkirona, both here and abroad. Presently, Regkirona, or CT-P59, is allowed to be used on patients with severe symptoms or high risk groups with mild symptoms only. The company said Wednesday that it has asked the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for permission to use on COVID-19 patients aged over 12, with mild or severe symptoms. Celltrion said it has filed clinical data from its phase 3 cli

LG Electronics announced Wednesday that the company will join the Business Ambition for 1.5°C, an international alliance of companies for carbon emission reductions. The global campaign led by the UN, calls on businesses to set targets to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The collaborative action, which is in line with the Paris Agreement, also seeks for net zero carbon by 2050, the company added. LG Electronics is the first South Korean fi

SK Bioscience has been given the green light to proceed with a late stage clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, heightening expectations for a homegrown vaccine becoming available next year. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced Tuesday that it has given approval to the SK Group company’s plan for the final-stage Phase 3 study of GBP510, based on interim data from the company’s phase 1clinical trial. Developed in collaboration with the University of Washingt

Two days into online vaccine bookings for those aged 18-49, South Korea has experienced no major errors and system crashes so far, unlike previous sessions for other age groups. According to government officials, the main reason behind the smoother operation is a reduction of traffic. The country has divided the eligible population into 10 groups, depending on the last digit of their birth date, and allows them to book their vaccine slots only on a designated day that matches their number.

Now granted parole, Samsung Group’s de facto leader Lee Jae-yong will be released from the Seoul Detention Center at 10 a.m. Friday. His freedom, however, could be short-lived, as he is fighting two more criminal trials -- one on alleged accounting fraud and other offenses during a merger of two Samsung affiliates and another for his alleged use of the anesthetic propofol without a prescription. He was behind bars for his conviction for bribing former President Park Geun-hye as part of

Every summer around this time, South Korea releases hundreds of prisoners either on parole or pardons, in celebration of Liberation Day on Aug. 15. This year, the traditional practice of clemency has drawn particular attention as it could include one of the richest men in the country: Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, the de-facto chief of Samsung Group. Come Monday, a parole committee within the Ministry of Justice will convene for a final review of candidates, which will det

More than 6 out of 10 South Korean parents are willing to have their children vaccinated, a local survey has found. A research team at Busan National University Hospital published the findings Thursday after it had surveyed 343 individuals across the country between May 25 and June 3. A total of 226 of those polled were parents with children under 18, while the rest were children and adolescents between the ages of 10-18. The survey was conducted when the inoculation age limit was 16, the r

South Korean pharmaceutical giant Celltrion announced Wednesday that the company will develop a messenger RNA vaccine that can protect against COVID-19 variants, under a partnership with US-based biotech firm TriLink BioTechnologies. TriLink is a San Diego-based contract development and manufacturing organization for synthesis of nucleic acids and mRNA capping analogs. “Under the partnership with TriLink, (Celltrion) will develop a mRNA vaccine platform, through which the company could

Boryung Pharmaceutical on Tuesday disclosed clinical trial results that showed its hypertension drug Kanarb is effective in controlling the blood pressure of patients who have experienced a stroke. By keeping patients’ blood pressure under control, the drug helped reduce the risk of recurrent strokes and major vascular events, it added. The clinical study was conducted at 27 medical institutions in Korea during a 24-week period, involving 1,035 patients who previously experienced an i

South Korea‘s first centralized institutional review board kicked off operations Friday, amid hopes it would expedite the review of drugs and treatments used to treat serious conditions, including COVID-19. An institutional review board, or IRB, is a constituted group designated to review and monitor biomedical research involving human subjects. Many hospitals, universities and other medical institutions in South Korea have their own IRB, but there was no state-authorized central IRB. &l

Kim Beom-su, the founder of the company behind South Korea’s most popular messaging app KakaoTalk, is now the richest person in the country, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Friday. Kim has seen his fortune reach $13.4 billion this year, surpassing Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and de-facto leader Lee Jae-yong, whose net worth was estimated at $12.1 billion. Kim’s assets grew by $6 billion in 2021 alone as Kakao shares soared 91 percent, boosted by the stock m

Samsung Electronics’ operating profit in the second quarter soared 54.3 percent on-year to reach 12.5 trillion won ($10.9 billion), its best quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2018. According to the firm’s earnings report on Thursday, sales in the April-June period increased 20.2 percent to 63.67 trillion won, the highest for any second quarter to date. The robust performance was largely driven by the semiconductor business. When broken down, the semiconductor busi

South Korean companies operating in virus-stricken Southeast Asian countries have asked for the government’s help in procuring COVID-19 vaccines for its workers there, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Wednesday. They also called for relaxed quarantine requirements on inbound business travel to Korea at a recent online meeting with ministry officials. The meeting was organized as a number of Southeast Asian countries are reporting explosive surges in infections driven by

Samsung Biologics, a biopharmaceutical unit of South Korea‘s top conglomerate Samsung Group, posted all-time high earnings for the second quarter, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday. The company’s sales in the April-June period reached 412.2 billion won ($357.1 million), up 34 percent from a year earlier. Operating profit soared 106 percent on-year to reach 166.8 billion won during the same period. Samsung Biologics said the improved earnings were backed by new contra

Factory workers at Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, SK hynix and other major manufacturers in South Korea began getting their vaccine shots on Tuesday, the health authorities said. They are part of the 303,159 workers from 43 large companies that operate large production facilities here and have in-house clinics, covered by the country’s first factory vaccine rollout program, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The shots to be injected have changed from Mod

South Korean pharmaceutical giant Celltrion has submitted for global review the results of an animal study which it said suggested the efficacy of its COVID-19 treatment Regkirona against the delta variant, the firm said Monday. It also added that its US partner tasked with developing an inhaled version of the monoclonal antibody treatment also known as CT-P59 or regdanvimab has secured a $7 million funding from the US Army Medical Research & Development Command. According to the compan

South Korean government spending on research equipment and facilities declined during the five years ending in 2019, but the country spent more on research and development during the same time frame, a report said Sunday. According to the paper by the Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning based on 2019 data, the government spent 678.5 billion won ($588.97 million) on research hardware in 2019, down from 930.2 billion won in 2017 and 971.1 billion won in 2015. Over the 2015-201

Not content with stopping at fast-food tills, toll booths and bank tellers, tech is coming for influencers’ jobs, too. A new wave of artificial intelligence-created digital characters has leapt across the uncanny valley -- the chasm in appeal for renderings that are unsettlingly, but not convincingly lifelike -- and risen to the fore of the marketing world, in some cases clinching deals worth millions of dollars. Korean companies have developed their own virtual influencers, but they a