[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Hyun-seok] SuzenTech's blood-based tuberculosis diagnostic kit, the world's first of its kind, is making a full-scale entry into China, one of the world's top three tuberculosis markets, through Orion Holdings and the Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company 'Shandong Lukang Pharmaceutical (hereinafter Lukang)'.
SuzenTech announced on the 23rd that its tuberculosis diagnostic kit has been selected as the first business item for 'Shandong Lukang Haoliyou Biological Technology Development Co., Ltd. (tentative name)', a joint venture established by Orion Holdings and Lukang for bio-business in China, marking its entry into the Chinese market.
Orion Holdings and Lukang have chosen 'diagnostic kits' for early detection of infectious diseases with high incidence rates and severe diseases such as cancer as their core business area, and signed a memorandum of understanding for technology export with SuzenTech last May.
Orion Holdings and Lukang plan to sign a formal technology export contract with SuzenTech as soon as the joint venture is established. The new joint venture will handle regulatory approval and sales of SuzenTech's tuberculosis diagnostic kit within China.
SuzenTech's tuberculosis diagnostic kit is the world's first kit that rapidly diagnoses tuberculosis through blood based on biomarkers derived from tuberculosis bacteria. It completed product manufacturing approval from the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and was registered for health insurance coverage by the end of last year, and is currently in use domestically. Clinical trials are underway in Asia, including China, to enter the global market.
The conventional tuberculosis diagnostic method required extracting sputum from the patient's lungs, which was inconvenient. Especially for children and the elderly, extraction was difficult, making accurate diagnosis challenging. Even when sputum was extracted, accurate and rapid diagnosis was difficult due to external infections and contamination.
For these reasons, the proportion of smear-negative tuberculosis patients, who test negative through sputum tests despite having active tuberculosis, reaches 30%, and in China, this proportion is even higher, reducing the effectiveness of sputum-based tuberculosis diagnosis.
Son Mi-jin, CEO of SuzenTech, said, "China, along with India and South Africa, is one of the world's top three countries with high tuberculosis incidence, ranking second worldwide in the number of tuberculosis patients as of last year, so the demand for tuberculosis diagnosis is very high. We will focus the company's capabilities on ensuring the success of SuzenTech's tuberculosis diagnostic kit in the Chinese market by closely cooperating with Orion, which has high recognition and distribution networks in China, as well as the Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company Shandong Lukang Pharmaceutical."
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
