AstraZeneca Korea (CEO Jeon Se-Hwan) and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (President Cha Soon-do) will collaborate to support the development of biohealth companies in Korea.
AstraZeneca and KHIDI signed a pre-event business agreement at the AstraZeneca K-Bio Expressway (AZ K-Bio Expressway) forum held at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas on Thursday.
Through the agreement, AstraZeneca will share its overseas business know-how and collaborate on open innovation to support the development of domestic biohealth companies.
In addition to the K-Bio Expressway event, the company will also cooperate in efforts to attract the A.Catalyst Healthcare Innovation Hub to Korea, which utilizes a global open innovation platform to help domestic companies expand into more diverse overseas markets.
The forum was an extension of the company's various domestic collaborations, and was organized to promote collaboration with domestic biohealth companies with innovative technologies and expand opportunities for global collaboration, including overseas market entry. The event was attended by more than 80 pre-registered biohealth companies.
Given the high demand for domestic biohealth companies to enter the Chinese market, AstraZeneca China executives shared their key business status and market entry strategies in China.
In the first presentation session, Cindy Wu, Head of Overseas Business Development, AstraZeneca China, spoke about the current state of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry and AstraZeneca's innovative approach in China. Yolanda Han, Director of iCampus, an international life science innovation hub campus in China, introduced iCampus and shared best practices of international companies that have entered the Chinese market through collaboration with AstraZeneca.
“As a certified innovative pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca Korea has been making the largest R&D investments to develop the next generation of innovative new drugs,” said Jeon Se-Hwan, President of AstraZeneca Korea. ”In order to develop the domestic biohealth industry and create mutual benefits, we are not only co-developing with various companies, establishing production bases and supporting overseas expansion, but also working with domestic startups to innovatively improve the treatment environment by creating a digital treatment environment and utilizing A.I.
Today's event will be an important milestone in this collaboration to support domestic companies to expand their overseas expansion in the biohealth sector and become competitive in the global market.”
KHIDI, Director of Cha Soon-do said "Expanding into overseas markets is essential for further growth in the biohealth sector and we hope that the cooperation with AstraZeneca, which has achieved numerous successes in overseas markets, will be of practical help to Korean companies and lead to better results."
“The Ministry of Health and Welfare will spare no effort in providing policy support for open innovation by actively encouraging such collaboration and innovation,” said Oh Chang-hyun, director of the Health Industry Promotion Division of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, who visited the event. ”We hope that today's event will create a new model of cooperation and provide a meaningful opportunity for domestic and foreign companies to develop mutually.”
Meanwhile, at the pitching event held behind closed doors this afternoon, a total of eight companies were selected as the first round of the event from among the 20 companies that applied for pre-pitching and presented their promising technologies. The eight companies selected for the first round of pitches were V.E. Pharmtech, Cellatoz Therapeutics, Cellid, SN Bioscience, Abion, Ilias Biologics, Oncosoft and Ticaros. Two finalists will be selected by a global panel of AstraZeneca judges and will receive cash prizes and international commercialization consulting, in addition to the iCampus tour that the first round winners will receive.
