The first patenting from South Korea’s Neudive Inc. sees its CEO, SungJa Cho, applying for protection of the company’s mobile digital social therapy device, NDTx-01, which helps build the social skills of neurodiverse individuals, and in particular children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and social communication disorder.

The lively antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) space chalked another collaboration as Taipei, Taiwan-based Foreseen Biotechnology Co. Ltd. scored a global licensing agreement worth as much as $1.03 billion with Ipsen SA, of Paris, for antibody-drug conjugate FS-001, which is said to bear first-in-class potential. The drug takes aim at a novel tumor-associated antigen that is overexpressed in many solid tumors and plays a critical role in tumor proliferation and metastasis, the companies said.

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis was renamed, for the first time in 34 years, to metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis (MASH), but a name change is far from being the biggest development in the field, according to experts at Bioplus Interphex (BIX) Korea 2024.

Silicon Valley-based Biomap is setting up a new global biocomputing innovation hub, dubbed Biomap Innohub, in Hong Kong as the local government ramps up investment to build supercomputing prowess, Vicky Qu, senior vice president of Biomap, told BioWorld. The goal is to accelerate novel drug product development and commercialization with biocomputing.

Kazia Therapeutics Ltd.'s stock shot up 248% on July 10 after the Sydney-based company reported that paxalisib showed a 3.8-month improvement in overall survival, a 33% improvement, for newly diagnosed unmethylated patients with glioblastoma (GBM) compared to the concurrent standard-of-care arm in the pivotal GBM-Agile phase II/III study.

The industry is looking, with renewed hope, to the “promise” of messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics for a wide range of diseases beyond COVID-19, and not only in vaccine form but also for gene and cell therapies.

Seoul, South Korea-based Genexine Co. Ltd. plans to merge with privately held EPD Biotherapeutics Co. Ltd. by October 2024 to build a pipeline of novel targeted protein degradation therapeutics with EPD Bio’s BioPROTAC platform technology.

Lotte Biologics Co. Ltd. broke ground on its contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) plant at its Songdo Bio Campus in Incheon, South Korea, on July 3 to grow its production capacity and set “a new standard” for Korean CDMOs in the global market.