Handok (CEO Young-jin Kim) held the R&D symposium to mark the 60th anniversary of its foundation at the SC Convention Gangnam on September 19, 2014.

At the symposium, Handok presented the progress in research on targeted cancer treatment drugs, new target metabolic disease drugs, and the medical device for treating hypertension, which are all under development at the Handok Central Lab, and exchanged opinions on the newest trend in research. In the first session of the symposium, CEO of Genexine Inc. Young-chul Seong made a presentation titled “The efficacy of therapeutic vaccine for uterine cancer, while the director of the Handok Central Lab Young-gyu Cho discussed “developing a drug to treat auto-inflammatory diseases”. The second session included a presentation on the current research trend on diabetes and obesity treatment drugs by Dr. Jin-hee Ahn from KRICT. In the third session, professor Hae-young Lee from Seoul National University lectured on the neurectomy in the treatment of resistant hypertension. In the last session, professor Kang-yeol Choi from Yonsei University presented on the development of an anticancer drug which inhibits both Ras and Wint signaling pathways, and then Yonsei University professor Myung-soon Baek made a presentation titled “The current status and problems of genome-tailored therapy.”

Handok Chairman Young-jin Kim said, “The R&D symposium was organized in an attempt to help develop the pharmaceutical industry as well as new products in celebration of the 60th anniversary of founding Handok.” He went on saying, “Even though Handok is a late-starter in R&D, all of the projects that our company is currently working on are either first in class or best in class drugs targeting the global market. By achieving great results, Handok will become a global total healthcare company centered on R&D, which will prosper for the next 100 years.”

Handok is recreating itself as a R&D-oriented total healthcare company. It received a new drug development fund worth approximately 5 billion won from the Korean government. Handok’s first bio new drug “HL2351” (auto-inflammatory disease treatment drug) was designated as a project for the cross-government new drug development program. In addition, the pharmaceutical company was selected as one of the World Class 300 companies in recognition of its new drug development project currently underway