South Korea will supply generic drugs for Covid-19 therapy to low and middle income countries with two pharmaceutical companies, Celltrion and Dongbanf FTL, having obtained the license for its production. Celltrion and Dongbang FTL will develop and produce generic drugs and supply them to 95 low and medium income countries as per the license contract. Celltrion is planning to complete the development and start commercialization of the drug following which the finished drug will be manufactured at its Cheongju Pharmaceutical plant.
Celltrion recently signed a contract with the UN Medicine Patent Pool (MPP) for the generic production of Pfizer’s oral Covid-19 treatment.
This comes close on the heels of Pfizer’s decision to expand the accessibility of its Covid-19 drug in low- and middle-income countries through MPP. The license was only given to 35 companies in 12 countries.
Korean companies Dongbang, Celltrion and Hanmi Pharmaceutical FTL are able to produce and supply generic drugs after securing a license for MSD’s oral Covid-19 treatment.
Starting with producing AstraZeneca vaccine and also Novavax vaccine, SK Bioscience has become the hub of Asian vaccine production.
Currently producing and supplying Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines, Samsung Biologics also produces antibody Covid-19 treatments of Lilly, GSK, and AstraZeneca. Developed by India’s Zydus Cadila, Hanmi Pharmaceutical will also produce a plasmid DNA COVID-19 vaccine ‘Zycov-D,’ on consignment.
