Abion to be listed on Kosdaq market

Abion revealed its growth strategies and future plans in an online news conference on Monday ahead of its upcoming IPO in the Kosdaq market.

“With our differentiated R&D strategies, Abion will achieve technology transfers through continuous studies,” CEO Shin Young-key said. “By going public on the Kosdaq, Abion will raise brand awareness and enhance reliability to grow into a global innovative anticancer drug developer.”

Abion is a biomarker-based developer of an innovative anticancer drug founded in 2007. It initially went public in the Konex market in 2014 and seeks to move to the Kosdaq market on a special technology basis.

Abion CEO Shin Young-key announced the company’s vision and strategy during an online news conference Monday ahead of its IPO in the Kosdaq market.

Precision oncology refers to developing treatments on a specific group of patients who have undergone a selection process. Abion boasts a high level of precision oncology demanded by the advanced regulatory environment to develop anticancer therapies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the company said.

The company can sort out specific patients and the capabilities to prove the efficacy of treatment through clinical trials, it added.

Abion has two major pipelines.

The first pipeline concerns developing anticancer drugs using precision oncology for licensing out technologies. The major drug of concern is ABN401, a c-MET inhibitor. c-MET is a biomarker and a major anticancer treatment target. Increased signals from c-MET lead to amplification which is one of the causes of cancer. ABN401 permeates directly through the cells to inhibit the abnormal signals of c-MET. The market value of c-MET treatment rates up to approximately 5 billion dollars.

The second pipeline is for treating central nervous system diseases and infectious diseases as a cash cow business. For example, ABN101 is a bio better version of interferon-beta used for multiple sclerosis treatment. The company is planning for a clinical trial this year.

Abion is also proceeding with the “Biodefense Project,” and some of the candidate substances are already going through clinical trials.

Abion aims to raise about 38.7 billion won ($33 million) by issuing 2.28 million shares with an offering price of 14,500won-17,000won.