A Full-scale Foray into the US
GC Pharma has set up vaccine company Curevo, Inc. in the United States, signaling a full-scale foray into the world's largest market.
Established in Seattle in November last year, Curebo will be in charge of conducting research and development (R&D) on a next-generation shingles vaccine.
Curevo, which is 81.4% owned by GC Pharma, is planning to start a clinical trial of herpes zoster vaccine CRV-101, which was jointly developed by GC Pharma and the MOGAM Institute for Biomedical Research in the US, within this year.
Curevo will partner with the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), a US nonprofit research institute in the field of infectious diseases. Dr. Corey Casper, chief scientific officer of the IDRI, decided to manage the development of the shingles vaccine. Choi Seung-hyun, head of the MOGAM Institute for Biomedical Research, will serve as an advisor.
This will mark the first time GC Pharma will begin to develop a premium vaccine such as a shingles vaccine. The company has been selling Zostavax, a shingles vaccine produced by MSD, a multinational pharmaceutical company, in Korea for a long time, but has not have its own shingles vaccine product.
As GC Pharma is a latecomer in this sector, the company plans to develop its vaccine into a best-in-class product that has a differentiated effect from current products. Starting with the shingles vaccine, GC Pharma is expected to start full-fledged vaccine development along with Curevo in the US.
Currently, apart from the shingles vaccine, Curevo has a varicella vaccine and a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine in the pipeline. The company is employing a strategy to make it easy to advance into the United States, the largest market in the world, by procuring necessary resources and conducting clinical trials in the US.