President-elect Yoon visits SK Bioscience HQ

Promises “full support for vaccine development”

Promises “expanded support for pandemic treatment and vaccine developers and deregulation”

President-elect Suk-yeol Yoon visited SK Bioscience headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do, and promised “We will spare no effort in the development of vaccines so no one can say they could not develop vaccines due to lack of money.” Transition team chair Cheol-soo Ahn and members of the Social Welfare subcommittee of the transition team accompanied Yoon to the site, and Tae-won Chey, Chairman of SK Group, and Jae-Yong Ahn, CEO of SK Bioscience were also present at the site.

 

According to SK Bioscience, president-elect Yoon observed the entire vaccine R&D process, from the extraction of animal cells used for vaccine development and production to culturing, fermentation, purification, and analysis.

 

Yoon said, “I will visit more R&D sites in the future.

 

Korea’s economy, security, and health all depend on this.” Yoon said, “In my administration, I plan to spare no support for companies that develop vaccines and treatments for the pandemic, including SK Bioscience.

 

If companies ask for loosening of some regulations in the R&D process, I will actively review it and make sure that the companies are not inconvenienced." Jae-Yong Ahn, CEO of SK Bioscience, said, “We need steady support from the government to continue on our hard-earned vaccine development capabilities." Transition team chair Cheol-soo Ahn said, “The new virus is an important national crisis that requires continued management.

 

Using this as an opportunity, it is the new administration’s task to create a data-driven disease control and prevention system.

 

To SK Bioscience, transition team chair Cheol-soo Ahn said,” The NA had always deferred making decisions on vaccine-related budgets as a low priority agenda, but the new administration’s goal is to secure vaccine sovereignty in Korea by investing in vaccine development so Korea could gain vaccine development capabilities.” On the morning of the same day, SK Bioscience had announced that its own synthetic antigen COVID-19 vaccine candidate’GBP510’ had shown superior immune response to its comparator in a Phase III clinical trial.

 

After securing safety data on GBP510 within the month, the company plans to apply for domestic and overseas approvals for its drug as a vaccine used for COVID-19 prevention after basic vaccination .