Published 30 Jul.2021 14:50(KST)
[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyungsoo] As COVID-19 cases surge again, interest in messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology is growing in the domestic stock market. Last month, stocks like Jinwon Life Sciences and Igen soared, sparking a craze for related stocks, but recently they have stalled. On this day, Quantamatrix surged to the price limit in relation to ‘ultra-parallel high-purity nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) purification technology.’
At 2:50 PM on the 30th, Quantamatrix recorded 19,300 KRW, up 29.97% from the previous trading day. Withus Pharmaceutical is also showing strength.
The College of Engineering at Seoul National University announced that Professor Kwon Seonghoon’s research team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering developed ultra-parallel high-purity nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) purification technology. Since RNA-based vaccines and new drugs cannot be synthesized directly, the existing process required synthesizing DNA and then transcribing it into RNA. DNA synthesis, which is prone to errors, inevitably involved culturing Escherichia coli over a long period and extracting DNA, resulting in high production costs and low production efficiency.
By applying the high-purity nucleic acid purification technology developed by Professor Kwon’s team, it is possible to reduce production costs and shorten time by omitting the Escherichia coli culturing process, ultimately maximizing the production volume of RNA vaccines and therapeutics.
Another barrier to developing mRNA vaccines is the method of stable delivery within the body. Because mRNA itself is heat-sensitive and easily degraded, only some multinational pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna have succeeded in developing vaccines. Inventage Lab has secured technology to uniformly encapsulate genomes in lipid nanoparticles (LNP) and mass-produce them. Kim Joo, CEO of Inventage Lab, said, “Companies with mRNA, companies supplying LNP raw materials, and companies with manufacturing technology capable of mass production must collaborate to succeed in vaccine development,” adding, “We are having detailed discussions with representative companies, and I think Korea will be able to release a vaccine by the second half of next year.”
Withus Pharmaceutical is developing a long-acting hair loss treatment based on Inventage Lab’s microfluidics technology. Additionally, it has made equity investments.
Demand for mRNA COVID vaccines is expected to increase for the time being. Pfizer, a U.S. pharmaceutical company that developed an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, earned over 9 trillion KRW in sales from COVID-19 vaccines alone in the second quarter of this year. Reflecting the volume of sales contracts signed so far, Pfizer expects to generate approximately $33.5 billion (about 38.5 trillion KRW) in revenue from COVID-19 vaccines by the end of this year. Vaccines are still mainly distributed in developed countries, and research on the duration of vaccine effectiveness is ongoing. Since annual vaccination may be necessary, the need for follow-up vaccine development is increasing.
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