CJ Group to make bioscience unit ‘global No. 1 microbiome company’

CJ Bioscience, a subsidiary of CJ CheilJedang specializing in the “red bio” business of pharmaceutical and healthcare business, was officially launched Tuesday.

CJ CheilJedang officially launched CJ Bioscience, its subsidiary specializing in biopharmaceuticals, on Tuesday.

The new company vowed to develop microbiome-based new drugs and strengthen its competitiveness in the wellness business to grow as the group's future growth engine.

"We plan to become the top global microbiome company by 2025 that has 10 pipelines and two license-out deals," CJ Bioscience CEO Chun Jong-sik said during a ceremony celebrating the company's establishment at the group headquarters in downtown Seoul.

During the ceremony, Chun presented three innovative growth strategies to achieve the company's goal of becoming the top microbiome company worldwide.

For instance, it will secure excellent R&D capabilities by building a bio-digital platform through expanding the cohort, securing global human microbiome big data, and accelerating the development of new drugs based on the bio-digital platform.

By using the bio-digital platform, the company will shorten the development period and improve the clinical success rate by upgrading the microbiome drug candidate material platform.

The company will also focus on the global expansion of new businesses such as next-generation sequencing (NGS), genome diagnosis, contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO), and personalized health functional food.

"In two to three years, the company plans to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval for a phase 1 clinical trial of new drug pipelines, including immunotherapy and autoimmune disease treatment candidate, and license out the substances through joint research with multinational pharmaceutical companies," Chun said.

Microbiome-based bio-platform technology will have a significant impact on the overall medical and healthcare fields, becoming a new global blockbuster such as immunotherapy and mRNA vaccines, he added.

The establishment of CJ Bioscience came four years after the company sold off CJ Healthcare, its previous pharmaceutical subsidiary, to Kolmar Korea, for 1.31 trillion won ($1 billion) in 2018.

CJ Bioscience is a subsidiary that integrates Chunlab, a company specializing in the microbiome, and CJ CheilJedang's pharmaceutical resources in October last year.

CJ CheilJedang acquired a 44 percent stake in Chunlab through purchasing existing shares and new shares issued through a capital increase at about 98.3 billion won.

Chunlab, a company established in 2009 by Professor Chun Jong-sik of Seoul National University, specializes in the research and development of microbiome, a combination of microbe and biome referring to tens of trillions of microorganisms and their genes in the human body.

According to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the global microbiome market will grow from $80 billion in 2019 to $110 billion in 2023.

The government also recently established a national microbiome innovation strategy and decided to invest 1 trillion won over the next 10 years.

Aside from establishing CJ Bioscience, CJ CheilJedang is also very active in the microbiome field.

In 2019, the company invested in Ko Bio Labs, a microbiome venture company. The company also signed an MOU for joint research and development with Chunlab, Ajou University Medical Center, and Microbiotix 2020.