In Talks with CBM for Equity Investment
SK Group acquired a European gene and cell therapy (GCT) contract manufacturing organization (CMO) company in March. Now it is in talks to take over a U.S. company in the same business field.
SK Inc., the group’s holding company, announced on Nov. 16 that it was in exclusive talks with the Center for Breakthrough Medicine (CBM), a Philadelphia-based GCT contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) company, to make an equity investment in it. SK Ince. Intends to sign a contract within 2021.
This will mark SK Inc.’s first major deal in about eight months since its acquisition of French GCT CDMO company Yiposkesi in March. SK Inc. plans to solidify its position as a leading GCT CMO player in the United States and Europe, the world's two largest pharmaceutical markets.
GCT is a personalized innovative treatment that can treat incurable cancer and genetic diseases. It is showing strong growth thanks to its superior treatment effects. In the United States and Europe, it accounts for about 50 percent of biopharmaceuticals currently under clinical development. According to Deloitte, the GCT market is expected to surpass the antibody treatment market, the largest biopharmaceutical market of today, by recording annual average growth of 25 percent by 2025.
CBM intends to use SK Inc.’s investment to build the world's largest single GCT GMP facility by 2025 and hire 2,000 additional employees over the next four years. The management of CBM consists of industry-leading experts who played key roles in the bio CMO business including GCT.
CBM is a CDMO company that provides services for all stages ranging from preclinical stages to the completion of commercial product treatment development for GCT production. Its services include process development, design and production of plasmid DNAs, which are key raw materials for GCTs, process development, virus vector production, cell strain production, cell treatment and analysis test and production of commercial products.
SK Inc. emerged as a major global CMO player by setting up a synthetic drug production system in the United States, Europe, and Korea in 2018. The company entered the bio-CMO market through the acquisition of France's Yiposkei and has come closer to realizing its goal of becoming a global leading CMO company that produces both synthetic and bio-innovative drugs in major pharmaceutical markets, including the United States, Europe, and Asia.
SK Inc. established SK Pharmteco in California in 2019 to manage its global CMO operations, which include SK Biotech in Korea, SK Biotech Ireland, Ampac in the United States, and Yipokesi in France.