[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] IGEN is showing strong performance. It appears that the news about Professor Nayoung Lee's research team from the Department of Bio-Convergence Engineering at Sejong University completing a new vaccine adjuvant system 'CIA09' platform technology and elucidating its mechanism of action in the body has influenced the stock price.
At 9:17 AM on the 12th, IGEN was trading at 20,100 KRW, up 16.91% from the previous trading day.
Professor Nayoung Lee's research team at Sejong University's Department of Bio-Convergence Engineering announced the day before that they had completed the new vaccine adjuvant system 'CIA09' platform technology and clarified its mechanism of action in the body.
CIA09 is a cationic liposome-based adjuvant system. It acts as an antigen reservoir in the body to maintain antigen stability and attracts immune cells to the vaccine injection site. In particular, it activates antigen-presenting cells, thereby enhancing the immune response to the vaccine.
This technology is being applied to IGEN's shingles vaccine 'EG-HZ' and COVID-19 messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine 'EG-COVID'. IGEN is a company specializing in new drug research and development, established in 2000.
The research was conducted with support from the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Infectious Disease Crisis Response Technology Development Project. The study demonstrated that CIA09 effectively induces immune responses to vaccine antigens. This is significant as CIA09 can be utilized in the development of vaccines that have not been successfully developed before. The research results were published on March 15 in the international journal in the field of drug delivery systems, 'Pharmaceutics'.
Efforts to domestically produce the new technology 'messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)' vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are ongoing. The bio-venture company IGEN is independently developing these vaccines. IGEN plans to start clinical trials in June and commercialize the vaccines by next year. Recently, IGEN announced that in preclinical experiments on mice, they confirmed efficacy comparable to Moderna's vaccine. They are also in discussions with the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology for primate experiments.
Hongguk Jin, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities, stated, "Since April last year, in preclinical efficacy evaluations, neutralizing antibody titers similar to Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine preclinical results were observed," and added, "IGEN has completed domestic patent applications for the mRNA delivery system and the EG-COVID composition."
He continued, "Phase 1 clinical trials are scheduled to begin in the third quarter of this year," and explained, "Unlike Moderna and Pfizer's mRNA vaccines, which require storage below freezing, EG-COVID is being developed in a form that can be stored at room temperature."
Researcher Jin emphasized, "The company expects IGEN's vaccine to be able to replace Moderna and Pfizer vaccines," and noted, "The current market capitalization, which is less than 200 billion KRW, is an affordable level for IGEN, which aspires to be Korea's Moderna."
He added, "With the momentum gained in mRNA vaccine development, we expect the company's value to be re-evaluated," and predicted, "As the commercialization of mRNA has accelerated due to COVID-19, IGEN's mRNA vaccine development will also gain momentum with government support."
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