South Korean pharmaceutical giant Celltrion is preparing to launch an overseas clinical trial for a new medicine for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, according to industry sources Monday. Celltrion is currently recruiting participants in Poland for its phase 1 clinical trial for CT-G20, the South Korean biopharmaceutical company’s first-ever chemical drug for HCM, a heart disease for which there is currently no known cure. The firm plans to submit an investigational new drug application t

  An employee looks at works created by local artists on display at a lobby area of SK Telecom’s headquarters building in central Seoul. The South Korean telecommunications firm said Sunday that the company would continue installing artwork there to support local artists who have been deprived of opportunities to introduce their works amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (SKT)  

The South Korean government will discuss with providers of online services to set up detailed guidelines for the country’s “Netflix Law,” industry sources said Sunday. The Ministry of Science and ICT will hold a meeting this week with officials from Google, Facebook, Netflix, Naver, Kakao and Wavve. The companies are expected to use the session to clarify terms in the revised Telecommunications Business Act, which could potentially disrupt their business activities in the

South Korea plans to inject 2.17 trillion won ($1.9 billion) over the next 10 years to support development of new drugs, the government announced Thursday. Some 1.47 trillion of that money will come from state coffers, while private players will invest the remaining 701 billion won, the Ministry of Science and ICT said. The goal is to debut new medicines that could generate annual sales of 1 trillion won, it added. This budget would be spent on supporting the overall development process of

South Korean biopharma firm Green Cross LabCell has established a pet health care unit, the company announced Thursday. 　 The new entity, Green Vet, plans to introduce health care solutions and products that address various issues regarding the overall life quality of companion animals in addition to the essential medical support, said Green Cross LabCell CEO Park Dae-woo. The technology and know-how of Green Cross LabCell, which specializes in cell curing agents and transportation of consig

A local survey showed around half of local startup founders are from the country’s four most prominent universities, implying that educational background could play an important role in starting a new business here. “Many people easily associate startup founders with their individual talents or abilities rather than their educational backgrounds. (But data underlines) that the startup sector here is skewed towards certain universities,” said Park Ju-gun, industry tracker CEO

South Korea’s telecommunications firms KT and LG U+ said Wednesday they have invested a total of 26 billion won ($23.1 million) in the homegrown app market ONE store, a subsidiary of SK Telecom. KT has spent 21 billion won to acquire a 3.1 percent stake in ONE store, while LG U+ has acquired a 0.7 percent stake with 5 billion won, according to a joint statement released Wednesday. SK Telecom currently has a 50.1 percent stake, and local tech giant Naver has a 26.3 percent share in the

South Korea’s Hanmi Pharmaceutical announced Tuesday that the US Food and Drug Administration has postponed its commercialization approval of Oraxol. Oraxol is an oral formulation of paclitaxel, a drug used to kill dividing tumor cells. The novel treatment for metastatic breast cancer currently outlicensed to the company’s US partner Athenex. In a statement released Tuesday, Hanmi said its US partner Athenex received a complete response letter, in which the FDA included a review

As South Korea ramps up its COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, two local biopharmaceuticals are leading the supply and distribution of foreign jabs -- Green Cross and SK Bioscience. The state-run Public Procurement Service recently announced that Green Cross has been selected as a local distributor of the mRNA-1237 vaccine developed by US biotech firm Moderna, one of the COVID-19 vaccines that needs to be kept at low temperatures. Green Cross would be in charge of the distribution of the Moder

Samsung Electro-Mechanics officials present its folded, 10x optical zoom camera module for smartphones. The company on Monday announced it will begin mass production of the technology, claiming to be the first South Korean maker to do so. Folded zoom technology allows phone makers to minimize the camera’s protrusion in smartphones.  By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)

Statistics Korea’s data on Monday showed the male ratio at birth in South Korea fell to the lowest level last year, implicating the end of the country’s long-held tradition of boy preference. The gender ratio at birth, or the number of baby boys per every 100 baby girls born, stood at 104.9 in 2020 -- the lowest since the institution started to collect related data in 1990. The figure is close to a natural level observed worldwide of about 105 boys to every 100 girls. This repres

Netflix Korea will disclose its audit reports in March, which would be its first regulatory filing since entering the country in 2016. The local unit of the US media platform giant is incorporated as a limited liability company here, but has become newly subject to disclosure rules applied for publicly traded firms. The change is due to the effectuation last year of the Enforcement Decree of the Act on External Audit of Stock Companies, amended in 2017 to enhance business transparency and p

Artiva Biotherapeutics, an affiliate of South Korean pharmaceutical firm Green Cross, announced Sunday that it has secured $120 million in Series B financing to develop natural killer (NK) cell-based cancer therapies. Artiva Biotherapeutics said its new investor Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners has led the latest financing. Other new investors include Acuta Capital Partners, Cormorant Asset Management, EcoR1 Capital, Franklin Templeton, according to the company. The injection of fresh cap

Celltrion founder and honorary chairman Seo Jung-jin’s eldest son Seo Jin-seok is expected to obtain a seat in the company’s boardroom next month, industry sources said on Sunday. Celltrion is to finalize the appointment of the junior Seo as executive director at the shareholder meeting scheduled on March 26, the sources added. The first son has been serving as senior vice president for Celltrion since 2017. Seo Jin-seok also spearheaded Celltrion Skin Cure, the group’s cos

A bill from South Korea’s antitrust regulator aimed to govern dominant e-commerce platforms is still pending in the National Assembly due to a tug of war between two government bodies -- the Fair Trade Commission and the Korea Communications Commission. In the meantime, platform operators and local customers have been raising their concerns, viewing the regulatory move as excessive market intervention. A survey conducted by Korea Startup Forum showed Monday that around 61 percent of res

SK hynix’s operating profit for the first quarter this year is expected to hit 1.36 trillion won ($1.2 billion), up 70.6 percent on-year, Shinhan Investment said Friday. The brokerage also forecast in its report that the company’s revenue during the three month period could go up 14.2 percent on-year to reach 8.2 trillion won. The on-year growth was mostly attributed to the increasing price in dynamic random-access memory products, or DRAM products, and the recent turnaround in ma

Kakao Mobility, South Korea’s largest mobility-as-a-service platform operator, is expected to accelerate its business expansion with a recent investment from Carlyle Group. International investment firm Carlyle Group Thursday agreed to invest $200 million in Kakao Mobility, valuing the South Korean mobility platform operator at 3.42 trillion won ($3.09 billion). Kakao Mobility currently operates Kakao T, the country’s most popular taxi-hailing platform used by around 28 million u

Lotte Chemical said Thursday that the company has developed urethane-based semi-non-combustible insulation product. The company added that the new fire-resistant insulation product can reduce the amount of smoke by 30 percent in case of a fire, compared to conventional urethane-based insulation products. According to the petrochemical affiliate of Lotte Group, it took two years for the firm to conduct research on the new insulation product, using purified isophthalic acid, which is widely u

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Thursday that it has decided to spend a total of 34.7 billion to build research facilities for robotics and artificial intelligence near Suseo-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. The central government will inject 24.2 billion won in the project, while the city government and the Gangnam-gu office will invest 2.5 billion won and 7.8 billion won, respectively. The region near Suseo Station has remained idle since December 2019, when the city government decided

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has appointed the institution’s provost and executive vice president Lee Kwang-hyung as its new president, it said Thursday. KAIST held a board meeting to appoint Lee the 17th president of the institution upon approval of Minister of Science and ICT. Lee, who is known as a futurist who introduced convergence studies at the academic institution, is an alumnus who earned a master‘s degree in industrial engineering at KAIST in 198