Kong Jong-seong, CEO of Genosco, said on the 24th, "Although our attempt to list on the KOSDAQ has failed, we will seek new alternatives and develop our third new drug following Zembiglo and Lecraza." He dismissed the possibility of being listed on the U.S. NASDAQ currently mentioned in the market, saying, "We do not consider it."
On the same day, CEO Kong held a media briefing at the Korean Chemical Society's spring academic presentation at the Suwon Convention Center in Gyeonggi Province, stating, "We attempted to list to move on to the next step and for our employees who suffered with Lecraza's development, but we failed." He added, "I will successfully lead the development of our third new drug to overcome this difficult situation." CEO Kong participated in this conference as a keynote speaker.
CEO Kong is recognized as a prominent researcher who has led the development of numerous domestic new drugs in the Korean pharmaceutical and biotech industry. He led the early development of Zembiglo (generic name: gemigliptin), the first diabetes treatment developed domestically and released in 2012. He also led the development of Lecraza (Rayzoritinib), which last August became the first domestically developed anticancer drug to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
CEO Kong joined Genosco, a subsidiary established in the U.S. Boston by Kim Jeong-gun, the founder of Oscotec, in 2008 after serving as the head of LG CHEM's new drug research institute, where he developed the candidate substance Lecraza. This candidate substance was transferred to Yuhan Corporation in 2015 and exported to Johnson & Johnson (J&J) again in 2018.
Lecraza has shown superior efficacy compared to AstraZeneca's Tagrisso, which currently dominates the global market, proving its potential to become the first domestic new drug blockbuster (with global sales of 1 trillion won). Oscotec and Genosco receive 20% of the royalties related to Lecraza's sales from J&J. Yuhan Corporation receives 60%.
Oscotec attempted to list Genosco to create the second Lecraza, as large-scale funding is necessary to enhance its research and development capabilities. However, concerns about value dispersion from minority shareholders led the Korea Exchange to ultimately not approve the preliminary listing review of Genosco.
CEO Kong remarked, "My dream is not to export good technology that I've developed for a long time to global companies, but to develop the assets we create into new drugs directly." He noted, "I attempted to list to achieve that dream, but I will move on from the exchange's decision and look for other methods."
CEO Kong stated that domestic bio corporations need to focus their research steadily in one area, supported by institutional backing. He said, "Korea has various limitations on bio research and development, but corporations should not get swept up by the latest trends based on core technologies in restricted situations, and should selectively focus on one disease," adding, "It is necessary to make scale-up investments to directly develop the technology up to late stages, rather than exporting it due to lack of capacity during early development."