Ildong Pharmaceutical
Ildong Pharmaceutical (CEO Lee Jung-chi) has signed an MOU with Sudair Pharma Company (SPC), a pharmaceutical company in Saudi Arabia, to build a factory to manufacture anti-cancer drugs. This contract is a part of the “Korea–Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical complex” project being promoted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
This MOU is very significant in that the first cytotoxic anti-cancer drug factory will be built through a turn-key contract in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) region, a center of the Middle Eastern economy, with the design and installation method of Ildong Pharmaceutical.
Furthermore, expected profits from both constructing the factory and transferring the necessary technology and software are very high. Ildong Pharmaceutical also secured exclusive rights to supply raw materials for a certain period of time in the future and sales royalties of the final products. The factory to manufacture cytotoxic anti-cancer drugs will be completed in the Sudair region of Saudi Arabia by late 2016.
The target products to be manufactured are 20 kinds of anti-cancer drugs including Cisplatin, Docetaxel, and Capecitabine. Royalties following local production and distribution will also be discussed later.
Most of all, Ildong Pharmaceutical plans to use this factory as a bridge to expand into adjacent GCC markets including Bahrain, the U.A.E., Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait, in which exportrelated procedures and policies of pharmaceutical products are shared.
For the past 73 years after its foundation in 1941, Ildong Pharmaceutical has secured many power brands in not only general pharmaceuticals but also quasi-pharmaceuticals, health foods, medical devices, and cosmetics. The company has been building strong consumer confidence through constant R&D, investment in facilities, and innovation in systems.
Ildong Pharmaceutical showed its potential by succeeding in developing the first Korean lactobacillus medicine, Biovita, in 1959, when there was no starter culture whatsoever. The company then prepared a foundation for further growth by developing Aronamin in 1963. Aronamin and Biovita are still very popular in Korea.
In particular, Ildong Pharmaceutical completed the construction of a production facility exclusively for cytotoxic anti-cancer drugs for the first time in 2010 in Korea, and built another separate factory to produce cepha-series antibiotics. The company also finished remodeling its existing production facility for generics, and is actively attempting to penetrate the overseas market on the basis of upgraded and advanced facilities.
Among the above-mentioned facilities, the cytotoxic anti-cancer drug production plant is the only production facility in Korea to manufacture all of the tablets, capsules, and injections. Considering the characteristics of these medicines, the facility is designed to be perfectly immune from external pollutants. Ildong Pharmaceutical plans to apply the expertise acquired through the recent renovation of production facilities to the construction of the anti-cancer drug factory in Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, the central research lab of Ildong Pharmaceutical is working on various new drug studies especially related to resistant bacteria, malignant tumors, Alzheimer's disease, and aging. The target oriented anti-cancer drug IDF-11774 and PDF inhibitor IDP73152 are currently under official clinical trials. Patent registration has already been completed for ID-1201, a dementia medicine produced from natural materials, and clinical trials will start soon. There are a lot of high expectations about these newly-developed drugs.
In addition to developing new drugs, Ildong Pharmaceutical is showing off its technological capabilities in biomaterials such as lactobacillus and hyaluronic acid by applying for various patents. The company recently succeeded in developing quadrupled coating lactobacillus, and is also developing various functional types of lactobacillus including lactobacillus against Helicobacter pylori and lactobacillus to prevent dementia. The company is definitely pioneering competitiveness in the field of lactobacillus.
The company has applied for many other patents as well for Industry & Company techniques of hyaluronic acid and derivatives of Vitamin D3. The company is proving its leading technologies by showing remarkable research performance in the biomaterials field.