Kolon TissueGene resumes trading, reaches daily limit of 30%

Kolon TissueGene surged 30 percent Tuesday morning, the first day it resumed trading in three years and five months. [NEWS1]

Kolon TissueGene made a hot comeback on the local stock market Tuesday, soaring to its maximum trading ceiling of 20,850 won ($14.5) just two minutes after the market’s opening.

Opening at 16,050 won, the shares hit the daily gain ceiling of 30 percent, or 20,850 won, only two minutes after trading began. That gives the Korean biopharmaceutical company 1.44 trillion won of market capitalization and makes it the 24th largest company in the Kosdaq market.

The trading resumption comes over two years after its suspension as the Korea Exchange gave it permission a daily earlier. The company was suspended from trading in May 2019 after it turned out that one of the ingredients in Invossa was mislabeled in submissions to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for approval. Invossa is a cell and gene therapy that treats osteoarthritis.

The substance omitted from the ingredients list could possibly cause tumors, civic groups claimed, and Invossa’s license was revoked the next month. The product was undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials in the United States at the time, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) halted the trials.

But the U.S. FDA allowed the company to resume Phase 3 clinical trials in April 2020, which is seen to have been a big contributing factor in persuading the Korean authorities to give it permission to resume trading.


Listed in 2017, Kolon TissueGene shares rose as high as some 70,000 won, which made it the 10th largest company on the Kosdaq in terms of market capitalization. But shares plummeted as low as 8,010 won before the suspension, down some 90 percent from its peak.

Some 36.02 percent of Kolon TissueGene shares are owned by 61,638 retail investors as of the end of last year.

"We will surely repay our shareholders who had been waiting such a long time with trust," said Kolon TissueGene CEO Han Sung-soo. "We will try our best for the successful Phase 3 trials of TG-C [Invossa]."

Earlier in the month, SillaJen shares also resumed stock trading after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus over executives' illegalities. The shares reached the maximum daily limit for two consecutive days and closed at 12,250 won Tuesday, up 4.7 percent.

SillaJen shares rose as high as 152,300 won at the end of 2017 on expectations for Pexa-Vec, an anticancer drug candidate.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]