11 Firms Developing 12 COVID-19 Treatments
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced on Nov. 29 that a total of 11 South Korean companies are conducting clinical trials in developing 12 COVID-19 drugs.
Celltrion, which is working on the antibody drug candidate of CT-P59, completed its second-phase administration with 327 subjects on Nov. 25. The company is planning to apply for a conditional use approval within this year. Daewoong Pharmaceutical recently completed second-phase patient enrollment for its antibody drug candidate Foistar Tab. It is aiming to make the same application in January. Once the two companies succeed, both mild and serious cases can be better managed.
GC Pharma and Chong Kun Dang are also conducting second-phase clinical trials with GC5131 and CKD-314, respectively. Their goal is to obtain second-phase data within this year.
COVID-19 vaccine development in South Korea is relatively slower than the drug development activities. Genexine’s DNA vaccine candidate GX-19 is in the first phase and outcome announcement is scheduled for December or January. The first phase of SK Bioscience’s NBP2001 was approved on Nov. 24 and Gene One Life Science’s first phase is yet to be approved.
According to experts, South Korean vaccines are likely to become commercially available in the second half of 2021 at the earliest. The slow progress has to do with the relatively smaller number of South Korean COVID-19 patients and the public’s unwillingness to participate in clinical trials. Some companies are even failing to get data, despite the approval from the ministry, due to the lack of clinical trial volunteers.