[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] Ilyeon Pharmaceutical is showing strong performance. The news that the government will support clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines appears to have influenced the stock price.
As of 9:41 AM on the 6th, Ilyeon Pharmaceutical is trading at 62,700 KRW, up 8.85% from the previous day.
With the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, global demand for vaccines is increasing. The government announced a strategy to invest 2.2 trillion KRW over the next five years to develop domestic vaccines and achieve a "5th place share in the global vaccine market by 2025."
The government held a report conference on the "K-Global Vaccine Hub Vision and Strategy" chaired by President Moon Jae-in yesterday and stated, "From the second half of this year until 2026, we will invest 2.2 trillion KRW in funding to not only develop COVID-19 vaccines but also enhance overall vaccine production capabilities, raising the global vaccine market share from the current 9th place (1.5% market share in 2020) to 5th place."
Globally, gene and cell therapy CMO companies mostly operated small-scale facilities producing clinical-stage materials, and the number of production facilities was limited. Until the first approval of mRNA therapeutics last year, most gene therapies remained in clinical stages. Unlike antibody therapeutics, there was no demand for large-scale production facilities reaching commercialization stages. Recently, a company producing pDNA overseas, Company A, was acquired for $9.6 billion USD (approximately 10 trillion KRW), and worldwide, the value of gene and cell therapy production companies is rising based on their scarcity.
The Ilyeon Pharmaceutical Chungju Bio Plant, located in Daesowon-myeon, Chungju-si, Chungcheongbuk-do, was completed over about four years from September 2017 to June 2021, with a total budget of 80 billion KRW invested.
The Chungju Bio Plant is a large-scale commercial production facility for gene and cell therapies and is uniquely capable in Korea of producing from the drug substance to the drug product of gene and cell therapies in a ‘One-stop’ process. The bio-pharmaceutical drug product production capacity is 48 million vials for liquid formulations and 9 million vials for lyophilized formulations. Based on mRNA vaccines, it is expected to produce 720 million doses annually. The Chungju plant is a modular facility with utility infrastructure already in place on the available land, so the company stated that production lines and capacity will further expand with additional production items and scale-up.
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