Prestige BioPharma IDC, CEO Go Sang-seok Who First Discovered PAUF Protein Worldwide Appointed

Prestige BioPharma Group has appointed a new leader to head its newly established Innovative Drug Research Institute, signaling a full-scale leap toward becoming a global pharmaceutical and bio company.

Prestige BioPharma announced on the 5th that its subsidiary, Prestige BioPharma IDC, has appointed Sangseok Go as the new CEO and will transition to a dual CEO system. This decision was made to streamline management decision-making and enhance global competitiveness in new drug development ahead of the completion of a new 33,000-pyeong antibody drug research institute (IDC, Innovative Discovery Center) in the Myeongji district of Busan. Upon its launch, CEO Sangseok Go will accelerate the development of pipelines including the pancreatic cancer antibody drug, while the existing CEO Seokjae Seo will complete the construction of the new IDC building and lead its development into a global open innovation hub.

CEO Sangseok Go was the first in the world in 2009 to discover the therapeutic target PAUF (Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Up-regulated Factor) protein for Prestige BioPharma’s pancreatic cancer antibody drug candidate ‘PBP1510’. After first elucidating the oncogenicity of the PAUF gene, CEO Go has led the commercialization process from researching anticancer therapies targeting PAUF to developing pancreatic cancer antibody drugs and diagnostics. It is extremely rare for a biomarker discoverer to continuously conduct research for over 15 years, progressing from animal experiments to clinical trials. With CEO Go’s appointment, IDC expects to accelerate the commercialization of PBP1510 and the establishment of a pancreatic cancer treatment ecosystem, strengthening IDC’s role as the control tower for antibody drug research within the group.

CEO Go is an authority in antibody therapeutic research, having published 88 research papers including in SCI-level journals and holding 14 registered patents. He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in Microbiology and earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the same university. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Whitehead Institute at MIT in the United States. Subsequently, he developed a fully human monoclonal antibody that selectively binds only to the PAUF protein while serving as head of the Antibody Therapeutics Research Center at LG Chem, LG Life Sciences in the U.S., and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology. Since 2014, he has been a full professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Dong-A University’s College of Natural Sciences and served as dean of the college, actively conducting innovative research.

Additionally, CEO Go began serving as a scientific advisory member for Prestige BioPharma in 2019 and has held the position of director at Prestige BioPharma IDC since 2021. His appointment signifies that the new IDC construction is in its final stages. The Busan IDC is the largest research center in Korea developing biopharmaceuticals rather than synthetic drugs, with completion scheduled for May this year and relocation planned before June. It is a global new drug development hub developing multiple antibody drugs and biosimilars, and has been selected as a high-tech investment district designated by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and managed by Busan City, solely based on the single building.

Prestige BioPharma IDC has been conducting research based on its proprietary target materials with intellectual property rights on the 'PAUF' and 'CTHRC1' proteins, developing antibody therapeutics such as bispecific antibodies and ADCs (antibody-drug conjugates), as well as vaccine research for prevention and treatment of emerging infectious diseases and various diagnostic platform developments for early disease detection. This is why new antibody drug pipelines are highly anticipated in addition to the pancreatic cancer antibody drug PBP1510 and the difficult-to-treat solid tumor antibody drug PBP1710, both of which have been led from discovery to clinical trials. With the completion of IDC, Prestige BioPharma Group plans to focus more on developing innovative first-in-class antibody drugs as a specialized antibody drug development company.

In his inaugural speech, CEO Sangseok Go said, “The new drug development process is a long race comparable to a marathon, but our first goal is to accelerate the development of promising drugs through strategic methods such as the U.S. Fast Track designation for PBP1510 and to establish a systematic system to manage uncertainties and development costs throughout the R&D process.” He also emphasized, “Busan IDC, which will be the first link in the full value chain covering biopharmaceutical development, clinical trials, commercialization, and production, will foster new industry-academia-research business models through open innovation.”