Warc, 16 May 2014
SEOUL: Samsung, the South Korean electronics and engineering
conglomerate, has announced plans to expand its business into the
pharmaceutical industry with a particular focus on biotechnology.
As the electronics market begins to reach saturation point,
the company is looking further afield at other markets and is investing at
least $2bn in biopharmaceuticals.
It has a particular interest in developing biosimilar
medicines, a generic version of brand-name biotechnology drugs that have lost
their patent and which tend to be used for conditions such as cancer and
arthritis.
Christopher Hansung Ko, CEO at Samsung's Bioepis unit, told
Bloomberg the company was already South Korea's largest biotechnology firm and
aimed to become one of the biggest players in the world.
"Our mandate is to become No. 1 in everything we enter
into, so our long-term goal is to become a leading pharmaceutical company in
the world," he said.
"We have an outstanding pedigree of being able to
innovate an old process to a new process in order to improve in another sector,
so we apply that principle," he continued. "I can't see a reason why
we aren't going to be successful."
He said Samsung intends to launch its first biosimilar drug
in Europe in 2016 – this will be its own version of Amgen's Enbrel drug
treatment for arthritis – to be followed by a version of Johnson &
Johnson's Remicade treatment for auto-immune diseases in 2017.
Samsung is likely to develop its own biosimilar products
rather than seek acquisitions, he said, and the company hopes to earn annual
revenues of 1.8tr ($1.8bn) from biopharmaceuticals by 2020.
The news coincides with the company's announcement that it
will move further into the wearables market with the launch its own smart
eyewear later this year.
Data sourced from Bloomberg; additional content by Warc
staff
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