Less than a week after Roche pledged a hefty investment in the South Korean biopharma industry, Eli Lilly is following suit with a $500 million, five-year pact of its own.
Like Roche, Lilly has signed a memorandum of understanding with the South Korean government, a company spokesperson confirmed to Fierce Biotech. Further details of Lilly’s pledge are detailed in a release issued by the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare that was shared with Fierce.
Lilly’s investment is meant to attract clinical trials to South Korea, while also powering new innovation through the opening of an incubator as part of the Lilly Gateway Labs network, according to the release.
The new Gateway Lab will be built in collaboration with Korean manufacturing giant Samsung Biologics and is set to house up to 30 companies, according to a release from Samsung.
“This agreement will serve as a meaningful opportunity to strengthen the innovation capacity of Korea’s pharmaceutical and biopharma industry, while accelerating innovative drug development by promising domestic companies and enhancing their global competitiveness,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, M.D., Ph.D., South Korea’s minister of health and welfare, said in the government release.
Investing in South Korean’s burgeoning bio landscape fits neatly with the Indianapolis drugmaker’s plan to use its weight loss windfall to become a hub of global innovation, which multiple Lilly leaders have recently outlined to Fierce. Other parts of this endeavor include a supercomputer from Nvidia and dedicated venture funds.
When forging its similar $484 million pact with South Korea, Roche described a goal of building “an ecosystem for global clinical trials” and fueling enhanced R&D capabilities.
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Lilly has previously sought biotech innovation from South Korea, teaming up with RNA editing outfit Rznomics last year to co-develop a hearing loss therapy in a deal that could reach $1.3 billion in value.
Other large pharmas have also turned to the East Asian nation for novel candidates in recent years. Vertex Pharmaceuticals inked a small deal with Orum in July 2024 for tech to help with new gene editing therapies, while GSK garnered a brain-penetrating platform from ABL Bio and Boehringer Ingelheim licensed an antibody-drug conjugate from AimedBio.
Boehringer sees South Korea as a “strategic innovation hub” in Asia, a spokesperson for the German pharma told Fierce, and is currently running 50 global trials there spanning all stages of development.
In 2024, Boehringer established a Korean Business Development and Licensing function to “deepen open innovation partnerships with Korean biotech companies,” the spokesperson said.
Over in the venture capital world, Flagship Pioneering made a concerted effort to expand into the Asia-Pacific region in November 2023, hiring McKinsey vet André Andonian to lead the effort. Andonian recently told the Maeil Business Newspaper that South Korea is a priority for Flagship’s strategy.
The firm—which is responsible for a plethora of biotech startups including Moderna—brought BG Rhee, Ph.D., on board as special advisor in South Korea several months ago to further advance its presence in the country.
