Korea's CJ Bioscience buys drug candidates from 4D pharma of the UK

South Korea’s pharmaceutical and healthcare company CJ Bioscience Inc. has acquired drug candidates from the UK's 4D pharma plc. to improve competitiveness in the development of new medicine.

The subsidiary of South Korea’s food and bio giant CJ CheilJedang Corp. said on Monday it has signed a deal to buy nine drug pipelines for digestive, brain and immune diseases, as well as cancers from 4D pharma, a major global bio company specializing in the microbiome, the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses and their genes, which naturally live on the human body.

CJ Bioscience, which agreed to take over 4D pharma’s platform technology, plans to acquire the British company’s intellectual property including two technology platforms to develop new drug candidates and patents. Details of the deal such as the value have yet to be unveiled.

“The introduction of new pipelines provided the world’s best competitiveness for new drug development based on the microbiome,” a CJ Bioscience official said in Seoul said. “We plan to keep seeking new drug candidates through follow-up studies in addition to FDA clinical trials of existing pipelines scheduled this year.”

The US Food and Drug Administration in January approved the company’s clinical trials of the immune-cancer drug CJRB-101.

AIMS TO DOMINATE GLOBAL MICROBIOME MARKET

CJ Bioscience, which currently has the Ez-Mx Platform, a technology to discover microbiome biomarkers based on bioinformatics, aims to create synergy by combining it with 4D pharma candidates and platforms.

The South Korean company plans to revise its research and development (R&D) strategy after analyses of detailed data of each candidate. It will prioritize clinical trials of candidates with a high potential for success.

The company founded in January last year set a goal to become the top player in the global microbiome medicine market, which is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2030, with targets of 10 candidates and two out-licensing deals with foreign partners by 2025.

4D pharma is developing new drugs based on the microbiome. The pharmaceutical company is conducting phase 2 trials of its drug candidate MRx0518 in combination with US Merck & Co.’s anti-PD-1 therapy, Keytruda. 4D Pharma firm is also working on clinical trials of the substance in combination with Bavencio, a treatment for bladder cancer developed by Pfizer Inc. of the US and Merck KGaA of Germany.

Write to Ji-Hyun Lee at bluesky@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.