韩国生物企业高管呼吁加强与中国合作并放松监管

"China frightens me these days. When we try to develop a new drug, several companies in China are already working on it. With China advancing enormously in both quantity and quality, we need to think hard about what we should be doing."
Park Soon-jae, chairman of Alteogen, made that point at the "K-Bio Innovation Leaders Talk" session of the 2026 Global Bio Conference, held on the morning of the 28th at the InterContinental Parnas Hotel in Seoul's Gangnam district. "Our neighbor China is developing fast, and there is a fear that Korea will fall behind if it cannot find an answer," he said.
Joining Park at the roundtable were Lee Sang-hoon, CEO of ABL Bio; Kim Gun-soo, CEO of Curocell; and Yoo Jong-man, head of research at Organoid Sciences. The panel discussed how to sustain growth in Korea's biotech industry. Park Yoon-joo, an adjunct professor at Yonsei University's Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology and a visiting professor at Seoul National University's College of Pharmacy, moderated the session.
Lee of ABL Bio said Korean companies should strengthen partnerships with China. "I recently went to China and discussed with C-level executives how to build an overall strategic partnership, how we could use Chinese clinical personnel in Korea, and how to develop jointly developed technologies and compounds into newco ventures," Lee said. "How we pursue partnerships while competing at the same time is also important."
To make that possible, the panelists said, the government needs to actively ease regulations. "When you go to conferences on CAR-T, most of the new technology comes out of China," said Kim of Curocell. "That is because the Chinese market invests heavily in CAR-T and its rules on cell therapies are market-friendly. Global big pharma companies compare China and Korea when choosing where to run trials. Korea's system also needs to improve so that trials can move quickly, with treatment potential as the top priority."
Yoo of Organoid Sciences added that "for regenerative therapies to be commercialized, regulation and manufacturing systems have to advance together," saying an institutional framework that reflects the characteristics of new therapies is needed.
Above all, the panelists agreed, Korean biotech firms need to judge which technologies the market wants. Citing U.S. rival Halozyme, Park said: "Halozyme chose an exclusive licensing strategy, so after its first PD-1 deal covering Opdivo, it could not work on Keytruda, another PD-1 target. How you design a business development strategy, and how you execute it, matters enormously."
Lee also offered advice from his own experience. "We are a company centered on bispecific antibodies, but in 2024 Eli Lilly asked first about the possibility of delivering oligonucleotides rather than antibodies," he said. "I figured there was a reason behind that question, so we moved quickly with a U.S. company on research grafting small interfering RNA, or siRNA, onto a BBB shuttle, and that led to deals with Lilly and GSK. Each big pharma company has different target indications and strategies, so reading their needs is important."