CHA Biotech(085660) said on the 25th that it was finally selected for a follow-up research and development (R&D) project under the "2026 K-HERO cultivation and support program," overseen by the Ministry of Science and ICT and carried out by the Korea Industrial Technology Association as the specialized agency.
The K-HERO cultivation and support program is a government initiative that discovers in-house corporate research institutes with research and development capabilities in national strategic technology fields and supports the securing and commercialization of core and source technologies.
CHA Biotech will carry out the project titled "Development of therapeutics and establishment of commercialization strategies for MSC cell line (CHAMS) and function-enhanced cells (CHAGE) based on combinatorial gene expression for global clinical application." Over three years and six months, it will receive a total of 3.15 billion won in research and development funding to advance the clinical development capabilities of its cell and gene therapy platform.
Based on its mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) research and development experience, CHA Biotech has secured cell therapy technology, good manufacturing practice (GMP) manufacturing processes, a cell bank, quality control, and nonclinical and clinical development capabilities. In this project, it will build a cell and gene therapy platform applicable to various intractable diseases by combining the standardized raw cell platform "CHAMS" with "CHAGE," which enhances cell function by introducing therapeutic genes.
The main pipeline is "CHAGE-201," a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). CHA Biotech plans to verify the efficacy and mechanism of action of CHAGE-201 and establish a chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) system for producing clinical trial therapeutics. It plans to set up a cell bank, GMP manufacturing processes, quality testing and characterization systems, and conduct nonclinical safety studies.
Through CHAGE-201, CHA Biotech will verify the clinical applicability of the CHAMS-CHAGE platform, then expand the manufacturing and quality control and nonclinical and clinical development systems to subsequent pipelines. Starting with fibrotic diseases, it will broaden applications to neurological and autoimmune diseases, and pursue commercialization including the discovery of follow-up candidates and global technology transfer and co-development.
Nam Su-yeon, chief of R&D at CHA Biotech, said, "The selection of this follow-up K-HERO R&D project will be an important opportunity to advance our platform that extends CHA Biotech's accumulated stem cell research and development capabilities into gene-based, function-enhanced cell therapy technology and connects them to clinical development and commercialization," adding, "We will proceed without delay with the clinical entry of CHAGE-201 while expanding the application scope of the CHAMS-CHAGE platform to develop it into a next-generation cell and gene therapy platform."