Handok Kalos Medical held a board meeting to appoint Kim Churl-Joon and Park Jae-hyeong as CEOs. Park assumed his post as a new CEO on November 1.

Kim is currently serving as the Vice President of Handok and will now also assume the role of CEO of Handok Kalos Medical along with Park. Park has built his career in various areas of healthcare, including sales and marketing and is experienced in channel and pricing strategies. He has worked in marketing at Novartis Korea and was in charge of channel and pricing strategies at Medtronic Korea. With Kim Churl-Joon and Park Jae-hyeong as its new CEOs, Handok Kalos Medical is now ready to expediate the commercialization of DENEX, which is currently under development. Former Handok Kalos Medical CEO Euljoon Park plans to focus on product development as an executive director and CTO.

Handok Kalos Medical was founded as a subsidiary of Handok in November 2015 for the purpose of medical device research and development. It was established with an investment of KRW 10 billion from Korea Investment Partners’ “Korea Investment Fund for Fostering the Global Pharmaceutical Industry.” Handok owns 51 percent of its shares, while Korea Investment Partners own 49 percent. The company is currently in the process of developing a medical device, called DENEX^TM, for the treatment of refractory hypertension. Research for the development of the device originally began in 2012 at Handok’s Medical Device Research Center. 

Handok Kalos Medical is developing DENEX with the goal of launching the device in the global market. The quality of DENEX has been recognized worldwide; in March 2016, the device received the IOS 13485 certification for quality management systems for medical devices, and, in January 2017, acquired the CE mark for meeting all essential requirements of the European Medical Device Directives (MDD). In April 2017, Handok Kalos Medical’s DENEX project was selected as a 2016 Health and Medical Technology R&D Project by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) and will receive KRW 900 million in research funds over a period of three years.

Handok Kalos Medical is currently conducting initial clinical trials at Severance Hospital, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, Uijeongbu St. Mary’s Hospital, Korea University Guro Hospital, and Pusan National University Hospital targeting patients with severe hypertension that cannot be treated with standard medications. Once the clinical trials in Korea have been completed, the company will conduct clinical trials in Europe. Handok Kalos Medical is also in the process of jointly developing DENEX II, an upgraded version of DENEX, together with Singapore’s national R&D institute, A*STAR. The research support project is being sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare and the KHIDI.