LG Chem builds S.Korea's first plant for clinical trials

LG Chem Ltd. has built South Korea’s first pharmaceutical plant dedicated to clinical trials, which the company expects to speed up its medicine development by directly handling drug candidate tests.

The two-storey plant, measuring 7,220 square meters, has recently begun pilot production in Osong, North Chungcheong Province, where its life science division is based. It spent 63 billion won ($50 million) to build the facilities, a company official said on Monday.

The plant will produce both biopharmaceuticals and combination drugs in the pipeline.

Particularly, it will take charge of drug development in the preclinical stage and phase 1 trial, whereas Boston-based AVEO Pharmaceuticals Inc. focuses on late-stage trials of drug candidates and commercializing them.

Last month, it completed the $571 million purchase of the US biotech firm AVEO to strengthen its anti-cancer drug portfolio and accelerate its foray into the US market.

The new plant in South Korea will be up and running as early as April of this year, upon receiving approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in relation to the current good manufacturing practice regulations.

“The plant will help us reduce delays in technology transfers and in responding to a production process change for contract manufacturing,” said the company official.

LG aims to carry out clinical trials at its own plants, instead of outsourcing them.

The plant is the first step for LG to separate the production of drug candidates in trials from that of commercialized medicines.

Currently, it produces both drug candidates and commercialized medicines in a plant in Iksan, North Jeolla Province.

The Iksan factory churns out the ingredients of the diabetes treatment Zemiglo and hyaluronic acid for the degenerative joint disease osteoarthritis for commercial use.

It also has been producing a new gout treatment Tigulixostat in multi-country phase 3 trials.

Its drug candidates to be produced in the Osong plant include ingredients for both diabetes and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), or nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases.

LG Chem also has expanded and revamped its production lines in Boston, in an effort to penetrate the world’s largest pharmaceuticals and drug market.

To that end so, it created a post of chief technology officer for which named its drug research head Hong Sung-won to lead its clinical trials there and take charge of the FDA approval process.

Write to Jae-Young Han at jyhan@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article