Choi Tae-won: "Developing a COVID-19 Vaccine Is Soon SK's Social Responsibility"

Chairman Chey Tae-won of SK is encouraging the researchers at SK Bioscience who are developing the COVID-19 vaccine through a video conference on the 27th.

[Asia Economy Reporter Park So-yeon] SK Chairman Chey Tae-won encouraged the members who are doing their best under difficult conditions such as COVID-19 vaccine development and urged them to fulfill their social roles as well.

According to SK on the 28th, Chairman Chey met via video call with the vaccine development team working at SK Bioscience in Pangyo, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province the day before and said, "As COVID-19 spreads, the public's expectations for vaccine development inevitably grow," adding, "It must be difficult as the attention turns into pressure, but I hope you do your best to produce good results."

Chairman Chey continued, "I heard that sometimes you even travel to areas with many confirmed cases for vaccine development," and emphasized again, "The prerequisite for vaccine development is the health and safety of all SK Bioscience members, so please strictly follow personal quarantine guidelines."

Chairman Chey’s direct communication with each member like this is based on his usual belief that during difficult times, internally, organizations and individuals should not be isolated, and externally, available resources and infrastructure should be utilized to contribute to solving social problems.

SK Bioscience is pouring company-wide capabilities into COVID-19 vaccine development. While many companies are challenging vaccine development, only a few have the experience of developing and commercializing vaccines using their own technology and platform like SK Bioscience.

In fact, SK Bioscience recently succeeded in expressing candidate substances for the COVID-19 vaccine and has entered the full-scale animal efficacy testing phase. It was also selected as the priority negotiator in the "Synthetic Antigen-Based COVID-19 Subunit Vaccine Candidate Development Project" announced by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

Chairman Chey carefully monitored the progress of vaccine development during the meeting. When he asked, "If the COVID-19 virus mutates, can the vaccine we are developing respond to it?" the development team replied, "The platform is a kind of foundational technology, so even if mutations occur, we can quickly develop new vaccines by applying them to the existing platform."

SK Bioscience already has experience making cervical cancer vaccines using insect cells and pediatric enteritis vaccines using bacteria, making this possible.

Prior to this, on the 23rd, Chairman Chey also held a video conference with members stationed in eight overseas regions including China, Japan, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Europe. He devoted most of the meeting time to checking on members’ access to daily necessities and their health, then reviewed overall management issues such as logistics networks, workforce operations, factory operations, and customer management.

Chairman Chey did not forget to urge that the current crisis should be used as an opportunity for greater leap forward. He said, "First, from the perspective of pursuing social value that SK aims for, please check if there are any difficulties in the regions you belong to."

He added, "Our business partners must be going through many hardships, so please find ways to help them as well," and suggested, "Whether they are foreigners or Koreans, please consider this from a humanitarian perspective."

Furthermore, he said, "Please come up with many ideas from the field on how to accelerate innovation in working methods triggered by COVID-19, how to discover new businesses, and how to reconsider investment strategies."

SK explained that Chairman Chey will continue his efforts to directly encourage members who are quietly fulfilling their duties under relatively difficult circumstances.

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