Hanmi Pharm R&D Shifts to 'Disease-Centered' Overhaul... Focus on 'Obesity' and 'Anticancer'

Hanmi Pharmaceutical's R&D Center, which has led Hanmi Group's innovative new drug development, has undergone an organizational restructuring focused on disease targets. The management's intention is to enhance Hanmi Pharmaceutical's future value by maximizing the fusion of specialized technologies and synergy by changing teams that were previously divided by drug types such as 'bio' and 'synthetic' to be centered on 'diseases.'

Hanmi Pharmaceutical Research Center, Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi Province [Photo by Hanmi Pharmaceutical]

On the 21st, Hanmi Pharmaceutical announced that it has significantly reorganized its R&D center to accelerate the development of treatments focusing on diseases with high unmet medical needs. This organizational restructuring, led by Im Ju-hyun, the eldest daughter among the 'second-generation owners' and Head of Strategic Planning at Hanmi Science (President of Hanmi Pharmaceutical), and recently appointed R&D Center Director Choi In-young, was carried out with a focus on technology fusion and maximizing synergy.

Hanmi Pharmaceutical has decided to focus on the fields of 'obesity metabolism,' 'immuno-oncology,' and 'targeted oncology' as new future growth engines. Departments that had somewhat unclear roles during the development process have been divided into 'preclinical research,' 'clinical transition,' 'oncology mechanism,' and 'analysis' teams to eliminate the grey zones in research and enable collaboration, communication, and speedy R&D among researchers.

In particular, a new obesity metabolism team has been established to exclusively handle Hanmi's recently intensified obesity metabolism project, 'H.O.P (Hanmi Obesity Pipeline).' The plan is to rapidly develop innovative new drugs encompassing obesity prevention, treatment, and management. This approach views obesity not merely as a target for weight loss but as a fundamental cause of chronic diseases, thereby accelerating R&D efforts.

Hanmi Pharmaceutical is operating over 30 new drug pipelines in areas such as obesity metabolism, rare diseases, and oncology. Among them, 'Epinofegdutide,' being developed as an innovative treatment for metabolic-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), is currently undergoing a global Phase 2b trial by MSD (Merck & Co., USA), and 'Efocifegtrutide,' a triple-action therapeutic, is progressing smoothly in clinical trials, having received recommendations for continuation from the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC).

This year, Hanmi Group plans to focus its capabilities on new research projects that can multiply Hanmi's R&D potential, including cell and gene therapies (CGT), messenger RNA (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines, and targeted protein degradation (TPD) drugs, which have been selected as new modalities (therapeutic approaches).

Lim Juhyun, President of Hanmi Pharm (left), and Choi Inyoung, Head of Hanmi Pharm R&D Center [Photo by Hanmi Pharm]

Choi In-young, Director of Hanmi Pharmaceutical's R&D Center, said, “To quickly respond to rapidly changing global technologies in the healthcare field and create innovations that do not yet exist in the world, collaboration, communication, and healthy competition among researchers with expertise in each field are essential. We believe this organizational restructuring will break down boundaries between technologies and become a solid foundation for building Hanmi into a 100-year company through fusion and synergy.”

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