Kwon Sechang, Former Hanmi Pharm CEO, Appointed as Vice Chairman of R&D at Cha Bio Group

Cha Hospital and Cha Bio Group announced on the 12th that they have appointed Kwon Se-chang, former CEO of Hanmi Pharmaceutical, as Vice Chairman in charge of research and development (R&D) commercialization. Vice Chairman Kwon will also serve as a distinguished professor at CHA University.

Kwon Se-chang, Vice Chairman in charge of R&D Commercialization at Cha Hospital and Bio Group.
[Photo by Cha Hospital]

The hospital explained that Vice Chairman Kwon is recognized as a leading figure who transformed Hanmi Pharmaceutical into a company focused on new drug development. He played a key role in large-scale global licensing-out deals with companies such as Sanofi, Janssen, Lilly, and MSD (Merck & Co., USA) while at Hanmi Pharmaceutical.

Kwon graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Biochemistry in 1986 and earned a Ph.D. in Animal Resource Science from Seoul National University Graduate School. He joined Hanmi Pharmaceutical in 1996, serving as head of the research center and CEO in charge of R&D, leading Hanmi’s global new drug projects.

Vice Chairman Kwon played a pivotal role in developing Hanmi Pharmaceutical’s proprietary platform technology for sustained drug efficacy, "LAPSCOVERY," filing over 1,000 patents. Building on the platform technology development, he participated in the development of biopharmaceuticals for obesity, diabetes, and intractable rare diseases. Last year, Hanmi Pharmaceutical became the first in Korea to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a LAPSCOVERY-based biopharmaceutical for chemotherapy-induced neutropenia.

Additionally, he has served as chairman of the R&D Policy Committee and the Pharmaceutical System Committee of the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association, as well as vice president of the Korean Society for Applied Pharmacology.

Vice Chairman Kwon stated, "Based on 35 years of accumulated research experience, I will create a new turning point for the group’s research and development. Leveraging Cha Hospital and Bio Group’s industry-academia-research-hospital system with a global network spanning 90 entities in 7 countries, I will do my best to generate new future value and achieve global commercialization results."

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