Dongkook Pharmaceutical Signs Agreement with Epil Biosciences... Accelerating Promising New Drug Development

Song Junho, CEO of Dongkook Pharmaceutical (second from left), and Kim Junghoon, CEO of Epil Biosciences (third from left), are posing for a commemorative photo after signing an agreement at the Dongkook Pharmaceutical headquarters located in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul on the 10th.

Dongkook Pharmaceutical is accelerating new drug development through a business agreement with Epil BioScience.

The two companies aim to develop promising new drugs in areas of mutual interest, particularly expecting synergy in non-clinical efficacy testing using the ‘cholesterol metabolism inhibitor library,’ drug delivery systems (DDS), product commercialization, approval, and marketing.

They plan to form a joint committee to collaborate on the overall process related to new drug development and commercialization, including the discovery and derivation of candidate substances, securing patents and rights, and license-out (technology export). Their goal is to derive at least one non-clinical candidate substance by the end of this year and to conduct full-scale non-clinical research for clinical trials (IND) next year.

Lee Gye-wan, head of Dongkook Pharmaceutical’s research institute, said, “Epil BioScience is a promising company not only with an excellent research and development (R&D) pipeline but also conducting various joint studies with leading universities in the United States. We plan to create synergy and achieve results by combining Dongkook Pharmaceutical’s drug development, production capabilities, and DDS platform technology.”

Kim Jeong-hoon, CEO of Epil BioScience, said, “We have high expectations for cooperating with Dongkook Pharmaceutical, which possesses excellent new drug development platform technology and capabilities. Based on the expertise of both companies, we will strive to successfully develop an outstanding new drug pipeline.”

Epil BioScience is a new drug development company with pipelines for rare severe obesity diseases such as Prader-Willi syndrome, drug-resistant prostate cancer treatments, and degenerative brain disease treatments like dementia, through regulation of lipid metabolism homeostasis in various cells including brain nerve cells, cancer cells, and fat cells. In addition to its R&D center located in Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province, it is conducting new drug development jointly with Purdue University, Dartmouth College, University of Delaware in the U.S., and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.