LG’s biotech legacy
How LG's shifting focus helped spawn a new biotech industry in South Korea
LG Life Sciences Ltd. was a pioneer, producing the first globally approved drugs developed by a South Korean company. A shift in priorities all but stopped the flow of innovative new drugs to the world market during the past decade, yet the pharma’s legacy of innovation lives on in a stable of biotech companies developing first-in-class and best-in-class molecules.
The pharma’s role in sparking the development of a Korean biotech industry has less to do with the specific research programs it developed, and everything to do with the environment it created for its scientists. James Lee, former LG researcher and CEO of autoimmune and inflammatory company Bridge Biotherapeutics Inc., estimates that 25-30% of the innovative biotechs in Korea founded since 1997 are led by ex-LG scientists...