65-year-old Seo Jung-jin, who left Celltrion, sets up a blood test startup

Jeongjin Seo, Chairman of Celltrion [사진=뉴스1]

Jeongjin Seo Celltrion(359,000 -0.42%)The group chairman (pictured) resigned from the front line on December 31 last year. He, who is considered to have made a mark in the history of Korean biotechnology, is now taking on a new challenge as a blood test startup.

According to Celltrion, Chairman Seo Jeong-jin decided to withdraw from his position without a separate retirement ceremony and enter the professional management system. Earlier, he officially announced his intention to retire at the end of the year at the’JP Morgan Healthcare Conference’ held in San Francisco, USA.

At the time, he said, “You have to separate management and ownership. If you retire, you will not hand over management rights to your son.” Accordingly, Chairman Seo Jeong-jin is scheduled to be elected as the Honorary Chairman of the Board of Directors, who is an unpaid employee after taking down the chairmanship of the board of directors at the regular shareholders’ meeting in March.

The future of’K-Bio’ found in the unemployed crisis situation

Prime Minister Jeong Sye-gyun listens to the explanation of Celltrion Chairman Seo Jeong-jin [사진=연합뉴스]

Chairman Seo Jeong-jin is Samsung Electro-Mechanics(178,000 +0.56%)After working at the company, he moved to the Korea Productivity Center and consulted with Daewoo Motors. At this time, Kim Woo-jung, the former chairman of Daewoo Group, stood out and was hired as a planning and finance advisor for Daewoo Motors. At that time, he was scouted by Daewoo, the best conglomerate in Korea, and thought that he would walk along the street, but as the IMF financial crisis hit and the Daewoo myth collapsed, he became unemployed by sleep.

He predicted that the bio industry would be promising, and in 2000, he founded Nexol Biotech, the predecessor of Celltrion, at the Venture Center of Yeonsu-gu Office in Incheon with about 10 colleagues from Daewoo Motors.

The following year, in 2001, Chairman Seo Jeong-jin got an opportunity to visit San Francisco, the US, which was the center of the global bio industry. There, I met with scholars in biotechnology, such as Dr. Baruch Blumberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, and Professor Thomas Merrigan, who was the head of the AIDS Research Institute at Stanford University, and had confidence in the bio industry.

As soon as he returned to Korea, he started to expand his business in earnest. In February 2002, Celltrion was established as a joint venture between Nexol Biotech and Baxgen in the US. KT&G(83,100 -0.24%) It also purchased a 9,2,958 square meter plant site in Songdo, Incheon, where the reclamation project was underway at the time by receiving funding from the company.

The possibility of success of a biosimilar (generic drug for biopharmaceuticals) shined in the 2010s. Celltrion took over the development of the world’s first biosimilar, and product sales began to occur. Celltrion’s biosimilars such as Remsima, an autoimmune disease treatment drug developed and produced by Celltrion, entered the United States and Europe, and generated hundreds of billions of dollars in sales per product.

Celltrion Healthcare(163,000 -2.92%) Including sales, it exceeds 2 trillion won. Recently, Celltrion, Celltrion Healthcare, Celltrion Pharmaceutical(238,600 -4.60%) The merger of the three companies was promoted, and soon the first’Big pharma’ in Korea was announced.

“I don’t intend to use corona antibody therapy for money.”

Celltrion Chairman Seo Jeong-jin announces corporate investment plan [사진=연합뉴스]

He also kept his promise to develop an antibody treatment for Corona 19 (a novel coronavirus infection). On December 29, last year, after 10 months of development, Celltrion applied for a conditional approval review of the Corona 19 antibody treatment’Recyrona’ to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. This is an achievement in the bio-medicine field, which is behind the US and Europe.

Chairman Seo Jeong-jin said at this year’s Global Bio Forum, “I think we can get approval in a short time by going through the procedure transparently,” and “It is possible to find hidden confirmed cases and treat them early by promoting the entire national diagnostic test.”

Celltrion’s Rekirona is the third corona19 antibody treatment application in the world for approval. The point is to mass-produce neutralizing antibodies using genetically recombined cells without the need to continuously collect antibodies from the blood of COVID-19 patients.

Celltrion plans to apply for emergency use approval in the US and Europe during this month along with the domestic conditional application. In Korea, conditional approval is expected within the first quarter if the expedited review deadline of 40 days is applied.

Chairman Seo Jeong-jin said, “I have no intention of using this antibody treatment as a kind of public goods for money making.” He said, “I will definitely feel that Korea has overcome this crisis best in the world when spring comes after this winter.”

“I want to return to being a startup entrepreneur”

Chairman Seo Jeong-jin walks alongside President Moon Jae-in, Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, and Park Yong-man, Chairman of the Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry [사진=청와대 제공]

Although Chairman Seo Jeong-jin has stepped down from the front line of Celltrion management, he is not expected to leave the industry. He once expressed his ambition to return to becoming a startup entrepreneur by creating a blood test company.

Chairman Seo Jeong-jin attended the ‘2020 Healthcare Innovation Forum’ held in November last year and said, “I’m 65 this year and I don’t know how many more years to work, but the mental age is the same as young people.” I want to immerse myself in it,” he said.

It is interpreted that he specified the blood test field because it is the field that he judged as the most important for future healthcare innovation.

Chairman Seo Jeong-jin said, “Even if it is not Corona 19, innovation (innovation) will inevitably occur in healthcare due to aging. The trend of aging is the increasing demand for medical services.” To do this, you need to be able to do the test at home. The elders cannot do the blood test, which is the most important of the tests.”

“If we can solve the blood test problem, we will have a service that can be used by 7 billion people around the world in Korea,” he said. “The only thing that will do this is me and Amazon.” This is why Chairman Seo Jeong-jin, who resigned from Celltrion’s management, is more focused on the future moves.

Reporter Kang Kyung-joo [email protected]