Endpoints June 2, 2025 08:00 AM EDT
A South Korean biotech working on multi-specific autoimmune disease treatments is looking to make a leap into the US.
Curogen, based in Seoul and backed by local investors, announced Monday that it plans to open a US organization as it gears up for its first clinical trial, likely in 2026. It also plans to seek global financial backers and has hired Arvind Sood as its chief operating officer. Sood was recently Innate Pharma’s US president, and before that, spent about 20 years as Amgen’s VP of investor relations.
“I hope that US or non-Korean investors will shift their focus more on Korean biotechs because Korean biotechs do have a lot of great innovative technology that are still hidden gems,” said Angela Jihyun Lee, business development leader at Curogen, in an interview.
US and European investors have focused on China-based biotechs in recent quarters, striking deal after deal. Curogen hopes Korea’s drug development ecosystem will get more attention, as well. Other local biotechs have recently drummed up pharma interest, with Eli Lilly and GSK inking collaborations with Rznomics and ABL Bio, respectively.
In addition to hiring Sood, the startup also added three US-based leaders to its board, including Flare Therapeutics CEO Doug Manion, Weill Cornell Medical College professor Allan Gibofsky, and Craig Gordon, the CEO of GordonMD Global Investments.
Gordon’s firm plans to lead Curogen’s upcoming funding round later this year. It recently forged a “joint investment collaboration” with South Korea-based investor Partners Investment, which has backed Curogen and other Korean biotechs like Rznomics.
“There’s tons going on in China, but what I think makes Korea stand out is it’s not just formulation innovation, it’s also target innovation,” Gordon said in an interview.
The 50-employee startup was founded in 2019 and is working on a pipeline of oral and under-the-skin medicines for autoimmune conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, hidradenitis suppurativa, psoriasis and multiple sclerosis. Curogen’s candidates include a small molecule CR-E1 inhibitor known as CR-C003, as well as bispecific and tri-specific therapeutic proteins.
Few Korean biotechs have set up outposts in the US, but Curogen hopes to change that. One of the few examples is Orum Therapeutics, a biotech working on protein degraders for ADCs. Orum developed a presence in both countries and went public on the Korean stock exchange, Kosdaq, last fall after selling one of its drug candidates to Bristol Myers Squibb for up to $180 million in 2023.
Multiple Korean biotechs have recently filed for listings on the Kosdaq, including ImmuneOncia Therapeutics, Organoid Sciences and Intocell. The exchange’s pharmaceutical index, known as KQ26, encompasses more than 120 biopharma companies.
Curogen, though, will seek to tap into the US markets for an eventual initial public offering on the Nasdaq, Gordon and Lee said. An in-house expansion into the US, rather than licensing out the pipeline, could deliver greater shareholder value to the biotech.
“The valuation is at a substantial discount to what you would see in the US market today,” Gordon said. “This was created and funded in South Korea in a highly efficient and cost-effective manner,” he said.
AUTHOR: Kyle LaHucik, Biotech Correspondent
Source: https://endpts.com/korean-startup-curogen-seeks-us-expansion-funding-to-back-autoimmune-drugs/
