New Business Discovery
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with global CEOs of big pharmaceutical companies and bio-venture startup incubation companies in the eastern United States, the world’s largest bio-cluster, to lay the groundwork for the success of Samsung’s biotech business.
According to Samsung Electronics on May 7, Lee recently met with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) CEO Joaquin Duato, BMS CEO Giovanni Caforio, Flagship Pioneering CEO Noubar Afeyan, Biogen CEO Christopher A. Viehbacher, and Organon CEO Kevin Ali to discuss ways to boost competitiveness in Samsung’s bio business and help Samsung discover new business items.
J&J is a truly global top-tier biopharmaceutical company with a history of more than 140 years. It is also a major customer of Samsung. BMS gave Samsung its first order for drug production in 2013, paving the way for the growth of Samsung’s bio business.
Flagship Pioneering’s CEO, Noubar Afeyan, is a co-founder of Moderna. Afeyan contributed to overcoming the COVID-19 crisis in Korea as Moderna signed a contract to give Samsung an order to produce messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines for Moderna. Samsung and Flagship Pioneering are also working together to identify and nurture promising biotech venture startups.
Biogen partnered with Samsung BioLogics to establish Samsung Bioepis, and although Biogen sold off all of its stake in Bioepis to Samsung last year, the two companies continue to work closely together with Biogen handling the European distribution and sales of Samsung’s autoimmune disease treatments.
Organon, which was spun off from U.S. drugmaker Merck in June 2021, is a global sales partner in charge of overseas sales of biosimilar drugs developed by Samsung Bioepis.
Previously, Samsung established bio-pharmaceuticals as a new growth driver in 2010 and established Samsung BioLogics in 2011 and Samsung Bioepis in 2012 to develop its bio business in earnest. In line with Chairman Lee’s intention to foster the bio business as a future growth engine comparable to semiconductors, the company continues to invest aggressively in the bio business and is promoting the discovery of new growth engines such as expanding its biosimilar pipelines.