[INTERVIEW] Seoul Bio Hub aims to put K-biomed on the world stage

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[INTERVIEW] Seoul Bio Hub aims to put K-biomed on the world stage

Published: 26 Nov. 2023, 17:28 Updated: 27 Nov. 2023, 17:07

SHIN HA-NEE
[email protected]

Kim Hyun-woo, director-general of Seoul Bio Hub, speaks during an interview on Wednesday at Seoul Bio Hub in Dongdaemun District, eastern Seoul. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Seoul Bio Hub, a biomedical startup hub nestled in the eastern center of the capital city, shares many of the key elements that make Boston a hotbed of innovation in the life sciences.

Kim Hyun-woo, Seoul Bio Hub's director-general, plans to leverage the region’s rich talent pool to stretch beyond Korea's borders as the startup cluster prepares to launch the Global Center.

“Looking at Boston, we envisioned Hongneung,” Kim told the Korea JoongAng Daily during an interview at the startup hub in Hongneung, eastern Seoul, on Wednesday.

Seoul Bio Hub opened in 2017 as Korea’s sole biotech and pharmaceutical startup support center and now serves as an anchor point in Hongneung's biomedicine cluster.

As of 2023, the hub houses some 130 biomed startups in the areas of drug development, digital health care and medical devices, including Imagoworks, which provides AI-based digital dentistry service, and CellenGene, a cell and gene-therapy developer.

“Resources that Hongneung offers are similar to those of Boston,” Kim explained, noting that the startup hub has strong connections with universities, hospitals and other research and development (R&D) institutes.

Much like Boston's life science cluster in Massachusetts, where top talent from MIT and Harvard attract investments and foster a vibrant venture ecosystem, Hongneung is home to some of Korea’s major universities including Korea University and Kyung Hee University.

Those universities also run their respective medical facilities nearby, which provides Seoul Bio Hub access to advanced biomedical R&D capabilities and talents, according to Kim.

Research institutes such as the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) neighbor the startup hub as well. The cluster also includes other startup facilities, including the BT-IT Convergence Center for digital health care ventures, Seoul Industry-Academia Bio Center and Seoul Bio Innovation Center.

“Seoul Metropolitan City has invested some 210 billion won ($160.8 million) in the bio cluster so far, which is a significant commitment for a regional cluster,” said Kim.

KIST and Korea University took the helm of Seoul Bio Hub this past July, with Kim, KIST's principal researcher, appointed director-general.

Per Kim, Seoul Bio Hub’s primary goal is to “minimize the setup costs” for biomed startups, which often face heavier initial expenses than tech startups do.

“Boston’s LabCentral and BioLabs became sought after because they enable startups to have almost no upfront costs,” said Kim.

A bird’s-eye view of Seoul Bio Hub in Dongdaemun District, eastern Seoul [SEOUL BIOHUB]

“People often say ‘you only need a pipette’ to run tests there,” the director-general continued, stressing that “just like how [Boston] became a sacred place for biomed startups by providing such environments, Seoul Bio Hub also needs to bring in similar impact.”

The 18,346-square-meter (197,475-square-foot) hub consists of a Research Experiment Building, an Open Innovation Building, and a Business Support Building. Its lab provides advanced tools including a cell culture chamber, ultrapure water production equipment and instruments for liquid chromatography and mass spectrometer.

The 14,018-square-meter Global Center is currently under construction, and will be open by next April.

“With the addition of the Global Center, our total area in operation will be doubled, but what’s more important is the space for experiments and research activities [the building will provide],” said Kim.

“While the floor area will double, the capacity for biomedical experiments will grow by fourfold or fivefold.”

Such expansion in capacity is certainly working as a strong pull factor for startups with advanced capabilities, according to Kim.

As biopharmaceutical R&D often spans years before a marketable product comes out, Seoul Bio Hub ensures its startups a tenancy period of two to four years, which is a longer period of time than other tech hubs provide.

Companies that move into the Global Center, in particular, will be able to rent the space for three years and extend that tenancy until their tenth year of operation.

The upcoming Global Center underscores Seoul Bio Hub's focus on global expansion.

The hub has undergone changes to its organizational structure since Kim took office four months ago, and the most significant was the creation of its new globalization team.

“For biomed companies, global expansion is not an option, but a necessity,” said Kim.

Kim believes that Korea, which currently faces a slowdown in growth, needs to diversify its economy, which is currently heavily reliant on semiconductors and manufacturing, into the fast-burgeoning, biopharmaceutical industry.

“In the global biomed market, Korea takes up about 2 percent of the total,” Kim said. “My expectation is that if we can push the figure to 4 percent, Korea will be able to drive up the national economy in an area where we have a lot of room to grow.”

Seoul Bio Hub is taking a two-track approach in its strategy for global expansion. It aims to help Korean startups reach overseas markets and also to bring overseas players onto its home turf.

To those ends, the hub is working with major Korean companies like Celltrion and such global players in big pharma as Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Roche Diagnostics, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb for startup competitions and events.

Kim hopes to bolster those relationships into partnerships that are more solid and continuous.

The director-general recently met with head of J&J Innovation's Shanghai hub; the two parties agreed to extend their collaboration from startup events to longer-term innovation opportunities, which will involve more active feedback from the pharma giant.

Kim emphasized that focusing on what Seoul, and the Seoul Bio Hub, can offer is important in fostering a strong venture ecosystem in Korea.

“Seoul alone won't be able to handle it If you try to bring in the entire life cycle of the bio industry,” which spans from R&D all the way to manufacturing, said Kim, stressing that “drilling down” on an area of focus is a more effective way to scale up the domestic life science sector.

The director-general emphasized the importance of creating synergy with other biomed clusters scattered across the country in order to establish nationwide collaborations.

Seoul Bio Hub “will strengthen practical cooperation with the clusters in Songdo, Osong, Wonju and more, which all have distinctive capabilities,” said Kim.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [[email protected]]