By Kim Tae-gyu
A South Korean drug maker is poised to join a Japanese corporation to develop a solution to a representative super bacterium, which is resistant to almost all antibiotics available.
Green Cross, a top-tier pharmaceutical firm in Korea, said on Friday that it plans to forge a business alliance with a Japanese partner in following months to develop effective antibiotics to treat the super bug dubbed MRSA.
MRSA is one of the most dreaded life-threatening super bacteria of today, which typically infects people in hospitals or closed communities. It claims around 20,000 lives a year in the United States alone.
``MRSA is arguably the most notorious bug with which the medical world struggles to contain. We are set to form a partnership with a Japanese entity early next year to find a method to curb it,’’ a Green Cross official said.
MRSA has yet to plague Koreans but research shows that the country’s citizens are exposed to the super bug 1.6 times per annum on average through the consumption of chicken or beef products.
Yet, the potential super-antibiotics would not work on NDM-1 CRE, another super bacterium detected in a general hospital here, thus bringing fresh fears of its growing global prevalence.
If Green Cross successfully generates a treatment for MRSA, market observers point out that the Yongin, Gyeonggi Province-based outfit’s corporate value would rocket once again.
``Should Green Cross be in the nascent stage of developing super antibiotics, its attempts would have little impact on the firm’s value because it takes up to 10 years to eventually generate drugs,’’ Daishin Securities analyst Chung Bo-ra said.
``In the case the company has already achieved substantial advances in its research, it will have some effect on its share prices just as was the case last year when Influenza A hit the country.’’
Influenza A, otherwise known as H1N1, claimed more than 100 lives in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. This benefited Green Cross, which had developed a vaccine for the highly-contagious disease.
The locally-made vaccine, the eighth of its kind worldwide, boosted both the top and bottom lines of Green Cross last year to threaten the long-held stewardship of perennial market leader Dong-A Pharmaceutical.
Green Cross chalked up a total of 643.2 billion won in revenue last year, up 24.6 percent from the previous year, to jump to the runner-up spot in the local pharmaceutical industry, trailing only Dong-A Pharmaceutical whose sales amounted to 801.1 billion won.
The former’s operating profits were unrivaled at 119.4 billion won, up 75.8 percent from 2008. This compares to 91.9 billion won recorded by Dong-A, up just 12.5 percent.
Originally, Dong-A was evaluated as the industry leader, and would be the one to break the 1 trillion won mark in annual sales in the domestic market. But now some predict that Green Cross might reach the milestone first.
voc200@koreatimes.co.kr
A South Korean drug maker is poised to join a Japanese corporation to develop a solution to a representative super bacterium, which is resistant to almost all antibiotics available.
Green Cross, a top-tier pharmaceutical firm in Korea, said on Friday that it plans to forge a business alliance with a Japanese partner in following months to develop effective antibiotics to treat the super bug dubbed MRSA.
MRSA is one of the most dreaded life-threatening super bacteria of today, which typically infects people in hospitals or closed communities. It claims around 20,000 lives a year in the United States alone.
``MRSA is arguably the most notorious bug with which the medical world struggles to contain. We are set to form a partnership with a Japanese entity early next year to find a method to curb it,’’ a Green Cross official said.
MRSA has yet to plague Koreans but research shows that the country’s citizens are exposed to the super bug 1.6 times per annum on average through the consumption of chicken or beef products.
Yet, the potential super-antibiotics would not work on NDM-1 CRE, another super bacterium detected in a general hospital here, thus bringing fresh fears of its growing global prevalence.
If Green Cross successfully generates a treatment for MRSA, market observers point out that the Yongin, Gyeonggi Province-based outfit’s corporate value would rocket once again.
``Should Green Cross be in the nascent stage of developing super antibiotics, its attempts would have little impact on the firm’s value because it takes up to 10 years to eventually generate drugs,’’ Daishin Securities analyst Chung Bo-ra said.
``In the case the company has already achieved substantial advances in its research, it will have some effect on its share prices just as was the case last year when Influenza A hit the country.’’
Influenza A, otherwise known as H1N1, claimed more than 100 lives in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. This benefited Green Cross, which had developed a vaccine for the highly-contagious disease.
The locally-made vaccine, the eighth of its kind worldwide, boosted both the top and bottom lines of Green Cross last year to threaten the long-held stewardship of perennial market leader Dong-A Pharmaceutical.
Green Cross chalked up a total of 643.2 billion won in revenue last year, up 24.6 percent from the previous year, to jump to the runner-up spot in the local pharmaceutical industry, trailing only Dong-A Pharmaceutical whose sales amounted to 801.1 billion won.
The former’s operating profits were unrivaled at 119.4 billion won, up 75.8 percent from 2008. This compares to 91.9 billion won recorded by Dong-A, up just 12.5 percent.
Originally, Dong-A was evaluated as the industry leader, and would be the one to break the 1 trillion won mark in annual sales in the domestic market. But now some predict that Green Cross might reach the milestone first.
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