[Energy Economy News Reporter Nakyung Lee] 

Celltrion was selected as a national project for the development of a'customized diagnostic treatment product' recently collated by the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology Evaluation and Management (KEIT) as part of a core technology development project in the bio industry, and started to develop insulin biosimilars in earnest. He said on the 3rd.

Celltrion was finally selected for this project together with Poonglim Pharmatech, a medical device company. Celltrion was in charge of the development and clinical trials of insulin formulation biosimilars, and Poonglim Pharmatech played a role by developing an automatic pre-filled pen-type injection that can be filled and used with the biopharmaceuticals developed by Celltrion. The project scale is 4 billion won over 4 years, of which 3 billion won is supported by the government.

The company explained that the national project evaluation committee highly evaluated the R&D plan of the business plan submitted together with the two companies, as well as the business performance and capabilities, etc., and selected both companies as the final candidates, the company explained. In particular, through the implementation of this task, the global insulin pen-type injection market, which had been dominated by multinational pharmaceutical companies, received a high score for the ability to lower the import dependence on the drug when the “localization No. 1” product that combines quality and cost competitiveness is released.

In fact, 96% of the global insulin market is in an extreme hypertrust state by the three original companies (Sanofi, Lily, Novo Nordisk), and biosimilars are only sold products agreed with by Sanofi and Lily. In the domestic insulin market, there were many opinions that the localization of products was urgently due to the high dependence on imported products, with Novo Nordisk occupying 45%.

In fact, 96% of the global insulin market is in an extreme hypertrust state by the three original companies (Sanofi, Lily, Novo Nordisk), and biosimilars are only sold products agreed with by Sanofi and Lily. In the domestic insulin market as well, Novo Nordisk occupies 45%, and there were many opinions that the localization of the product was urgently due to high dependence on imported products.

The two companies agreed to develop pen-type injections that can be administered up to 80 units at a time in an automatic injection method considering patient convenience, and they plan to succeed in commercialization by 2025 through four years of research and development.

Celltrion is a pen-type that lowers unit cost and enhances patient convenience through localization in the current treatment environment, where 77% of diabetic patients stop injection therapy on their own due to high cost, inconvenience of administration, and difficulty in managing needle use We believe that if injections are supplied, patient access to injection therapy will improve.