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OUR MICROBIOME DETERMINES BALANCED HEALTH
OUR MICROBIOME DETERMINES BALANCED HEALTH
MD Healthcare Inc.
(CEO Yoon-Keun Kim) signed a license agreement for joint development and
exclusive commercialization of inflammatory diseases and cancer treatments in
the Asian territory using microbiome extracellular vesicles (EVs) with Kolmar Korea
Co. The agreement was signed at Kolmar Korea Institute of Technology
(Seocho-gu, Seoul).
Through this agreement,
MD Healthcare will receive a certain percentage of royalties for technology
transfer fees and sales according to clinical development, licensing, and
commercialization, including down payments that are not obligated to return.
In addition, when
Kolmar Korea transfers technology to a third party, the profits will be
distributed between the two companies at a pre-agreed ratio.
The pipeline
licensed out by MD Healthcare is an innovative material based on the
extracellular vesicles (EV) isolated from Lactobacillus, a
representative beneficial bacterium, for the purpose of developing new drugs
for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases.
With this
contract, Kolmar Korea has obtained the patent for the use of Lactobacillus
EVs (Registration No. 10-2098067, PCT/KR2019/010267) held by MD Healthcare and
secured exclusive rights for use in the Asia territory including Korea, China,
and Japan.
The two companies
plan to use this material to develop treatments for inflammatory diseases such
as pneumonia, asthma, and inflammatory enteritis caused by respiratory viruses like
coronavirus in addition to treatment of intractable cancers such as lung,
colon, and liver cancer.
Consumption of probiotics
for health involves the ingestion of the bacteria and there are a variety of
challenges in the development of probiotics as pharmaceuticals. Rather than
acting on our body directly, probiotic bacteria secrete EVs from the intestine
as a key function of their efficacy.
Therefore, MD
Healthcare is focused on innovating the microbiome space through the
development of microbiome EVs directly. Microbial extracellular vesicles pass
through the intestinal mucosa and are directly absorbed by the cells of our
body. Microbial EVs show promising pharmacological action and are produced
through traditional bacteria culturing methods, thus attracting attention due
to its merit as a pharmacological agent.
It is known that
microbiome-derived EVs transferred from MD Healthcare to Kolmar Korea are
absorbed into our body and perform key immune and metabolic functions. As the
balance between beneficial bacteria and harmful bacteria-derived EVs
circulating in our body is attracting attention as a major factor determining
health and disease, MD Healthcare and Kolmar Korea will develop pharmaceuticals
using EVs derived from the microbiome.
MD Healthcare is
a bio-venture company that develops precision medical products by converging
intelligent technologies such as microbiome-related life science technology, EV-related
nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. MD Healthcare has established several
innovative new drug pipelines that treat intractable diseases such as cancer,
inflammatory diseases, CNS diseases, and metabolic-cardiovascular diseases
based on its proprietary precision medical platform (MD NanoBiomeTM).
Further, MD
Healthcare has also completed internal clinical performance evaluation of its
in vitro diagnostic AI software for solid cancers such as lung, liver,
pancreatic, stomach, colon, breast, ovarian, and bladder cancer through urine EV
microbiome genetic data (Next Generation Sequencing).
MD Healthcare
possesses a number of core technologies for precision medicine by convergence
of microbiome, EV, and AI technologies. The intellectual property rights it has
held so far include 64 domestic and 15 overseas patents (US, Europe, etc.) for
a total of 79 patents.
In addition to
the patent for Lactobacillus EVs, upon which this license agreement was
issued, MD Healthcare holds patents for more than 60 types of EV treatments.
Kolmar Korea, a
global pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and health functional food R&D and
manufacturing company, is enhancing its business competitiveness through active
investment.
Among them, the
pharmaceutical sector acquired HK inno.N (at the time CJ Healthcare) to
reinforce a new drug development platform. In the health functional food
sector, Kolmar B&H built production bases in China as well as domestically
in Korea for the expansion of its global business.
Kim Yoon-Keun,
CEO of MD Healthcare, said, "We plan to introduce new bio drugs through
continuous technology improvement and active business development in
cooperation with Kolmar Korea, a representative company of Korea. Thus, we plan
to lay the framework for the sustainable growth of the bio industry.”
CEO Kim
Byeong-mook of Kolmar Korea said, "We will develop innovative medicines
with MD Healthcare, a promising microbiome research leader, using microbiome
technology that has been gaining attention in both academia and industry."
Link: http://m.healthmedia.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=77628