SEOUL, Aug. 25(Korea Bizwire) — TerraPower LLC, a nuclear power startup founded by Bill Gates, has expressed hope for closer business ties with SK Group, the country’s No. 2 conglomerate said Monday. TerraPower expressed such a hope in a meeting between Gates and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, held in Seoul last week, where the [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — SK bioscience Co., the biotech arm of South Korea’s SK Group, said Thursday it will expand cooperation with the Gates Foundation on next-generation preventive medicines, with a focus on research and development (R&D) for pandemic preparedness. Officials from SK bioscience and the foundation held a meeting in Seoul on [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea has established its first national body dedicated to advancing organoid technology, marking a significant step toward standardizing and commercializing the field amid growing global demand for alternatives to animal testing. The K-Organoid Consortium, officially launched on August 13 at The Westin Josun Seoul, brings together 27 companies [...]
SEOUL, August 3 (Korea Bizwire) — LG Group is ramping up its investments in the biotech sector, acquiring a stake in U.S.-based cancer therapy developer Strand Therapeutics as part of a broader push into future-growth industries. Strand Therapeutics, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics company founded in 2017 by bioengineering graduates [...]
SEOUL, July 23 (Korea Bizwire) — Samsung Biologics Co. said Wednesday its second-quarter net profit gained slightly on-year, backed by increased production output at its latest facilities. Samsung Biologics’ net profit for the April-June period gained 2 percent on-year to 324.4 billion won (US$235.1 million), the company said in a regulatory filing. Operating profit rose [...]
SEOUL, July 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Im Seung-kwan, newly appointed as the fourth Commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), pledged Monday to strengthen South Korea’s public health security infrastructure and position the agency as a central command hub for infectious disease crises. Speaking at his inauguration ceremony at KDCA headquarters in Osong, [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s pharmaceuticals industry needs government-level support to mitigate potential impacts from the United States’ aggressive tariff policies, a local think tank said Tuesday. The recommendation comes after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs of up to 200 percent on foreign-made pharmaceuticals as part of his protectionist [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Despite a sluggish economy, South Korea’s health supplement industry posted double-digit growth in 2023, becoming the only segment of the country’s biohealth sector to do so, according to new government data. A report released July 13 by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) showed that the health supplement [...]
SEOUL, July 14 (Korea Bizwire) — In a move expected to accelerate the rollout of biosimilars — often referred to as a next-generation growth engine — South Korea’s drug regulator plans to streamline the approval process for these cost-effective biologic drugs beginning in 2026. According to pharmaceutical industry sources on Sunday, the Ministry of Food [...]
SEOUL, July 8 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s pharmaceutical industry is once again under fire as a string of illegal rebate scandals have surfaced in 2025, reigniting calls for structural reform and stronger support for new drug development. Prosecutors recently indicted three mid-sized pharmaceutical companies and their employees in connection with the so-called “residents’ rebate” [...]