Kibo and SMT Bio Selected as 'IP-Value Small Giants'

Cell Therapy Development Company
Support for Excellent IP Discovery and Commercialization

The Korea Technology Finance Corporation announced on the 21st that it has selected SMT Bio as an ‘IP-Value Small Giant Company’ by reflecting the valuation results of the cholangiocarcinoma cell therapy technology owned by the company, and will support an excellent IP Value Plus guarantee of 1 billion KRW.

The Value Plus guarantee is a customized guarantee product that discovers excellent IP in the high value-added advanced technology fields among the intellectual property (IP) owned by small and medium-sized enterprises, and supports commercialization funds linked to guarantees within the calculated value amount. The Kibo Central Technology Evaluation Institute awards the ‘IP-Value Small Giant Company’ certificate to companies selected as excellent IP companies through high-level technology value evaluations.

Kim Hyun, Director of the Central Technology Evaluation Institute (left), and Jung Yong-yoon, CEO of SMT Bio, are posing for a commemorative photo at the IP-Value Small Giant Company Selection Certificate Award Ceremony.

SMT Bio is a small and medium-sized enterprise established in April 2015 by CEO Jeong Yong-yoon, developing immune cell therapies using natural killer cells. Immune cell therapies have established themselves as a new treatment method for cancer following the success of CAR-T cell therapies, which improved T cell antigen recognition methods in the early 2000s. Recently, the development of therapies using natural killer cells, which are relatively safer compared to T cells, has been actively pursued.

SMT Bio is conducting a Phase 2b clinical trial for a cell therapy for cholangiocarcinoma and has received approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for the therapeutic use of clinical trial drugs, supplying them to cholangiocarcinoma patients. Kibo highly evaluated SMT Bio’s technological capabilities and supported a Value Plus guarantee of 1 billion KRW, and also supported technology commercialization through pre-diagnostic evaluations for technology special listing, among other measures.

Lee Jae-pil, director of Kibo, stated, “Although new drug development companies possess excellent IP, they face difficulties in financing due to the long development and commercialization preparation periods,” adding, “Kibo will continuously discover small and medium venture companies struggling in the process of commercializing excellent IP and will do its best to support their successful commercialization.”

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