As the United States continues to move to tighten bio regulations on China, Wuxi Biologics, a leading Chinese contract research, development and manufacturing (CRDMO) company for biopharmaceuticals, is speeding up its push into the Korean market.
After securing certification from the Ministery of Food and Drug Safety last month, Wuxi Biologics will participate in a bioindustry event in Seoul next month to expand its touchpoints with domestic biotech companies.
According to the industry on the 26th, Wuxi Biologics will attend the "World Bispecific & T Cell Engager Summit South Korea 2026" to be held in Seoul on June 9-11 and conduct meetings and order-taking activities targeting executives of domestic bio companies.
The event is a next-generation antibody therapeutics specialty conference that Hanson Wade, a global bio conference specialist corporations, is hosting in Korea for the first time this year, expanding a global bio conference that had been centered on the United States and Europe to Seoul, Korea. Unlike exhibitions, it is characterized by a focus on partnering between corporations.
Wuxi Biologics is competing with Samsung Biologics for the No. 2 spot in the global CRDMO market. While Samsung Biologics has yet to resolve a labor-management conflict, the competing corporations is engaging in aggressive order-taking.
At this event, Wuxi Biologics plans to focus on introducing its proprietary Bispecific Antibody platform, WuxiBody, and its chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) strategies to reduce risks that can arise during the development of Bispecific Antibodies and T cell engagers.
A Bispecific Antibody is a next-generation biopharmaceutical designed so that a single antibody simultaneously recognizes two targets. A T cell engager is an immuno-oncology technology that directly connects T cells, an immune cell, to cancer cells to induce an attack. Both technologies are drawing attention as next-generation anticancer technologies, but they are known to be complex in structure and highly challenging in manufacturing and quality control.
Accordingly, in the global CRDMO market, not only manufacturing capacity but also CMC and regulatory response capabilities are emerging as key competitive strengths.
In line with this trend, major global CDMOs, including Switzerland's Lonza, Korea's Samsung Biologics, and Wuxi Biologics, are emphasizing that they have the capabilities to validate the mechanisms of action of next-generation antibodies and support from early research and development through clinical stages.
In the industry, Wuxi Biologics' latest move is being interpreted as a signal of expanded sales efforts targeting Korean bio corporations.
Korean bio companies such as ABL Bio and LigaChem Biosciences are actively conducting research and development on Bispecific Antibodies and ADCs, and many bio companies operate without their own manufacturing facilities and instead partner with global CDMOs, leading to the assessment that this is an attractive market with latent demand.
In fact, in January this year, domestic corporations Y-Biologics signed a CDMO (contract development and manufacturing) agreement with Wuxi Biologics to develop a drug candidate for its next-generation triple-target immuno-oncology platform "Multi-AbKine," which it is developing in-house.
Also, last month Wuxi Biologics obtained good manufacturing practice (GMP) certification from the Korean Ministery of Food and Drug Safety for three major production facilities in China. Through this, the company secured the qualification to carry out the entire commercial manufacturing process for medicines supplied to Korea, from drug substance (DS) to drug product (DP) and packaging.
The product to be manufactured is the cholangiocarcinoma treatment "ZHERa (ingredient zanidatamab)," which received approval from the Ministery of Food and Drug Safety in March. It was developed by Canada's Zymeworks, with global rights held by U.S.-based Jazz Pharmaceuticals, while rights for Korea and some parts of Asia are held by BeOne Medicines.
The industry sees Wuxi Biologics as seeking a breakthrough in Asian markets, including Korea, amid the United States' intensified checks on China and supply chain realignment.
An industry official said, "Since Chinese corporations such as Wuxi Biologics and WuXi AppTec became targets of the U.S. Biosecure Act, they have actually pursued more aggressive lobbying and sales activities," adding, "Amid these changes, the trend of viewing Korean bio companies as an important customer group is becoming clearer."
Meanwhile, Wuxi Biologics said in its earnings announcement last year that 2025 revenue rose 16.7% year over year to 21.8 billion yuan (about 2.8 trillion won). The United States accounted for 58.1% of total revenue, followed by Europe at 23.1%, China at 12.3%, and other regions at 6.5%.