Georit Energy Appoints Professor Jeong Jong-kyung as President of Neurological Disease Treatment Division... "Global Big Pharma Interest"

Georit Energy announced on the 10th that Professor Jeong Jong-kyung, who is currently serving as the director of the Genetic Engineering Research Institute at Seoul National University, is scheduled to be appointed as the president of the 'Brain Disease Pharmaceutical Division.'

Georit Energy plans to appoint a board of directors nominated by Aprogen at the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders scheduled for January 10 next year and establish a new 'Brain Disease Treatment Division.'

Professor Jeong Jong-kyung is expected to apply for concurrent employment approval at Seoul National University to take charge of the Brain Disease Treatment Division. The company explained that Professor Jeong also plans to resign from his professorship at Seoul National University within 2 to 3 years and fully devote himself to Georit Energy's brain disease treatment business.

Professor Jeong graduated from the College of Pharmacy at Seoul National University, earned a master's degree in biochemistry from the same graduate school, and received a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular physiology from Harvard University. He then worked as a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and as a professor in the Department of Life Sciences at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. In 2010, he moved to the Department of Life Sciences at Seoul National University, where he has been focusing on research related to Parkinson's disease and mitochondrial functional disorders. Since 2021, he has been serving as the director of the Genetic Engineering Research Institute at Seoul National University.

Professor Jeong is a globally recognized leading authority in the field of Parkinson's disease. Over the past 30 years, he has published more than 110 papers as the first or corresponding author in top-tier international journals such as Cell and Nature.

Among these, numerous papers published in Nature and other journals were the first in the world to scientifically elucidate the causes of Parkinson's disease. Professor Jeong was the first to identify the functions of the genes Pink (PINK) and Parkin (PARKIN), known as key genes in Parkinson's disease. Furthermore, through subsequent research, he clarified how these genes and several interacting genes regulate mitochondrial function and affect the survival of dopamine neurons.

On the 4th, Georit Energy signed a technology introduction contract for three patents related to Parkinson's disease treatments and diagnostics, which are the results of Professor Jeong's over 30 years of research. In the future, in cooperation with Aprogen, the company plans to file additional supplementary patents and promote early technology transfer to global pharmaceutical companies overseas.

Aprogen CEO Kim Jae-seop stated, "Professor Jeong Jong-kyung is one of the two most outstanding scientists worldwide who have elucidated the causes and mechanisms of Parkinson's disease. I am confident that the new Parkinson's disease treatment substance patented by Professor Jeong and his research revealing how this substance is produced in vivo and how it prevents the death of dopamine neurons in the brain will be a scientific achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize."

He added, "This research paper will be published in top-tier journals such as Nature in the near future, and the Parkinson's disease treatment patent owned by Georit Energy will surely become the subject of a multi-trillion won deal proposed by global big pharma soon."