HONG KONG – Amgen Inc., one of the four largest U.S. biopharmaceutical companies, recently launched Amgen Korea, a move that coincided with the go-ahead to market two cancer drugs in the country.

The South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety gave the company the green light earlier this month to sell two of its drugs: multiple myeloma drug Kyprolis (carfilzomib) and the jaw-droppingly expensive Blincyto (blinatumomab), approved for a rare form of leukemia.

Blincyto is one of the costliest cancer drugs to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and comes at a price of $178,000 per patient in the U.S. The price of Blincyto in the Korean market remains undisclosed, but there's no question it is fulfilling an unmet need.

"For Blincyto, there is no competition in Korea. It is the only drug approved for this [rare leukemia] disease," Yoo Young-ji, assistant manager from the clinical studies department at Synex, told BioWorld Today. Synex, a South Korean medical devices consulting firm that deals with clinical studies and regulatory affairs, is working with Amgen Korea to facilitate the market entry for new drugs developed by the company.

The form of leukemia targeted by Blincyto is the most common type of childhood leukemia, affecting about 75 percent of pediatric leukemia patients. Although all age groups can develop ALL, children ages 2 to 8 are most susceptible. So far, Blincyto has shown a high level of efficacy compared to existing therapies for different forms of leukemia. In clinical studies, nearly one-third (32 percent) of participants have shown complete remission for approximately seven months.

Blincyto is designed to work by guiding T cells toward offending white blood cells by targeting CD19 proteins, expressed on top of B-cell lymphoblasts. The drug features Y-shaped proteins, which binds to target proteins on cancerous cells. When one strand is attached to the cancer cell, the other strand holds a T cell and brings the two together for a much more focused attack.

The FDA approved Blincyto in December 2014. In September, the drug received the green light by European regulators.

Kyprolis, a proteasome inhibitor, is approved in the U.S. It picked up another approval Thursday, with the European Commission granting marketing authorization in combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone for multiple myeloma patients who have received at least one prior therapy.

Amgen said it sees South Korea, which has a large number of patients with cancer and cardiovascular conditions, as an important platform for the global expansion of its drug pipeline in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Amgen is very happy to be launching a new affiliate in Korea," Amgen Korea's new general manager, Noh Sang-kyung, said during a press conference to mark the launch. "Equipped with a fast-developing life sciences industry and advanced biotech infrastructure, Korea holds immense market potential."

In the past five years, Amgen invested a total of KRW25 billion (US$22 million) in 29 clinical trials in South Korea; 18 are ongoing. The company is cooperating with 171 medical institutions, with 1,200 patients participating across South Korea.

On top of expanding its global footprint, Amgen is on the hunt for potential acquisition deals, digressing from its previous strategy of buying and licensing early stage assets. Amgen said it believes the valuations of the sector are more favorable for the later-stage assets than a year ago.

"As we said a year ago, that we would focus on early stage transactions and if you look at the activity that we engaged in over the past 12 months, you can see we brought in a lot of earlier-stage innovative new products and technology opportunities," said Tony Hooper, Amgen's executive vice president of global commercial operations, during the firm's third quarter earnings call. "And we said more recently that we're opening the aperture a little bit, beginning to look at our broader range of things, including potentially some larger things.

"So we're continuing to look and it may be some time . . . before the owners of those late-stage assets adjust their pricing expectations to reflect the current trading environment," Hooper added.