[Special Stock] Access Bio, Government's Full-Scale Effort for COVID-19 Vaccine and Treatment Development... Expecting Emergency Use Authorization for Rapid Diagnostic

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] The National Science and Technology Research Council (NST) and government-funded research institutes appear to have influenced stock prices by announcing plans to establish and implement countermeasures to overcome infectious diseases, including the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

As of 12:23 PM on the 18th, Access Bio is trading at 4,030 KRW, up 11.48% from the previous day.

NST and the government-funded research institutes are pooling institutional resources and capabilities to develop vaccines and treatments, and have decided to allocate budgets previously secured for other research to COVID-19 efforts. Some institutes have also requested the Ministry of Science and ICT to include project funds in the National Assembly’s supplementary budget.

The CEVI Convergence Research Group, led by the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, has developed a COVID-19 diagnostic technology with improved detection sensitivity compared to existing methods. The Chemical Research Institute compared the sensitivity of major primers and probe sets used worldwide for COVID-19 detection. It is expected to be utilized in developing sensitive real-time gene amplification-based molecular diagnostic kits. Wells Bio, which received the technology transfer, developed a diagnostic kit and applied for emergency use approval from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Wells Bio is a subsidiary of Access Bio.

The CEVI Convergence Research Group and Wells Bio signed an agreement to jointly pursue ▲ development of molecular diagnostic technology capable of detecting COVID-19 specific genes ▲ development and commercialization of immunodiagnostic technology for detecting antigen proteins of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science developed COVID-19 RNA gene standard materials to improve virus diagnostic accuracy, and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology plans to establish an evaluation system for the efficacy of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines using primates, alongside developing vaccine candidates and diagnostic kits. The Bioscience Institute will provide services utilizing biosafety facilities to companies involved in virus diagnostics, vaccines, and treatment development. The Safety Evaluation Institute plans to support safety evaluation tests for vaccine and treatment candidate substances.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.