MedPacto said in a filing on the 15th that Chief Executive Kim Seong-jin has stepped down and President Woo Jeong-won has been appointed as the new CEO. The company said the move is aimed at focusing capabilities on commercialization, including clinical trials for new pipelines and licensing out (L/O).
New CEO Woo Jeong-won, born in 1960, earned a bachelor's and master's degree in pharmacy from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in microbiology from Cornell University. After serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, a senior researcher at the Samsung Biomedical Research Institute, and a research professor at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, Woo became head of development, head of research, and CEO at Genexine before joining MedPacto as president in Mar. 2024.
MedPacto said it will continue developing its existing candidate "vactosertib," focusing on rare diseases, and plans in the second half to file investigational new drug (IND) applications for the new anticancer drug "MP010" and the bone disease therapy "MP2021."
In particular, MP010 is a fusion protein that combines TGF-β and tumor microenvironment (TME) targeting functions, and the company said it confirmed high complete response rates in preclinical studies for pancreatic cancer and triple-negative breast cancer.