Many of the corporations deemed successful in KOSDAQ listings and public offerings last year are companies with next-generation anticancer drug development technology. Attention is on whether this trend will continue this year.
According to the industry on Jan. 7, drug development corporation Kanaph Therapeutics is expected to become the first bio corporation to knock on the door of an initial public offering (IPO) this year. Kanaph Therapeutics said on Jan. 5 that it submitted a securities registration statement to the Financial Services Commission for a KOSDAQ listing.
Founded in Feb. 2019, Kanaph Therapeutics passed a technology evaluation in Aug. last year for a special technology listing. Including a 2024 Series C bridge round, it secured cumulative investment of about 61.6 billion won.
The corporation aims to enter KOSDAQ within the first quarter this year after demand forecasting and subscription. Through this listing, it plans to offer 2 million shares. The desired offering price is 16,000 won–20,000 won, with an expected offering size of 32 billion won–40 billion won. The lead underwriter is Korea Investment & Securities Co..
◇ Holding technology that reduces systemic side effects and targets only cancer
Chief Executive Lee Byung-chul, who earned a bachelor's in biology from Seoul National University, a master's in bioengineering from KAIST, and a Ph.D. in biophysics from UCSF, founded Kanaph Therapeutics based on experience at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Genentech, and Santen and other global research and pharmaceutical firms.
The corporation's core technology is the dual fusion protein platform "TMEkine." It combines an "antibody" that binds only to tumor tissue with a "cytokine protein," a potent immune stimulant, to act selectively only on tumor tissue—an engineered targeted immuno-oncology platform.
Its key principle is to activate immune cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME·Tumor MicroEnvironment) to kill (eliminate) cancer cells. By analogy, it is a technology that detonates an immune "bomb" only inside the cancer. The corporation says this can improve the systemic toxicity issues of conventional cytokine therapies.
Using this technology, the corporation is expanding into various antibody therapeutic modalities, including bispecific antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates (ADC). Its R&D pipeline comprises seven programs: two bispecific antibody drug candidates, one ADC drug candidate, one ADC platform development, and three small-molecule drug candidates.
The corporation's main revenue sources are technology transfer (L/O) of drug candidates applying its platform technology and research services. Its 2024 revenue was 4.25155 billion won, and revenue for the first to third quarters last year totaled 1.944 billion won.
Last month, GC Biopharma exercised its rights (option) over the bispecific antibody–based ADC technology held by Kanaph Therapeutics. This expanded the joint development agreement the two sides signed in Nov. 2024 and is meaningful in that it moves a preclinical pipeline into the development stage. As development progresses, Kanaph Therapeutics' revenue will also increase.
In addition, it separately signed technology transfer and joint research agreements with Lotte Biologics, Cyrus Therapeutics, Yuhan Corp., Dong-A ST, and Oscotec.
◇ Conditions for a hot IPO: tech out-licensing results and market-friendly offering structure
Last year, bio corporations Orum Therapeutics, Rznomics, and AimedBio went public in succession. All of these corporations possess anticancer drug development technology and shared the trait of posting sharp gains from their opening prices.
As of the close on Jan. 5, Orum Therapeutics' share price was 127,700 won, up more than 500% from the opening price. AimedBio and Rznomics also each recorded a so-called "tta-tta-sang," rising 300% from the offer price on their first trading day.
These corporations shared the commonality of showing strong share performance right after listing, based on conservative pricing strategies and technology out-licensing results before listing.
Previously, Orum Therapeutics signed technology out-licensing deals based on its ADC technology with Vertex, a global big pharma, then valued at over 1 trillion won, and with BMS for about 234 billion won.
AimedBio also achieved three technology out-licensing deals worth up to 3 trillion won while unlisted, based on its ADC technology. Key counterparties include U.S.-based Biohaven, SK Plasma, and global pharmaceutical company C. H. Boehringer Sohn AG & Co. KG.
Rznomics in May last year signed a technology out-licensing agreement worth up to 1.9 trillion won with multinational pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company to develop RNA editing technology–based therapeutics.
The field where global pharmaceutical corporations invest the most in R&D is cancer and oncology technology. The more aggressively global big pharma invest in securing diverse technologies to overcome the limits of existing anticancer drugs, the greater the opportunities can be for Korea's corporations to out-license technology.
An investment industry official said, "With tighter IPO market rules separating the wheat from the chaff and investor sentiment recovering in the domestic stock market, newly listed stocks are continuing to draw attention."
The official said, "In particular, bio corporations are demonstrating their capabilities by achieving technology transfer (export) results before listing, and expectations for major momentum—such as additional out-licensing at the time of listing and successful drug development—are at work," adding, "U.S. rate cuts and outcomes in technology out-licensing and clinical success are expected to affect bio corporations' IPOs and share-price direction."
Meanwhile, the total size of technology out-licensing by domestic pharmaceutical and bio corporations last year exceeded a record 20 trillion won. Although the number of deals was 17, down from the previous peak of 34 in 2021, the overall size expanded significantly as more deals topped 1 trillion won.