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| Yang Eun-young, head of Samsung Biologics' contract development organization business, left, and John Gill, head of Samsung Biologics' cell line development, attend the online launching event of the S-CHOice cell line. Courtesy of Samsung Biologics |
By Nam Hyun-woo
Samsung Biologics has launched its own cell line expression technology, dubbed S-CHOice, which enables higher productivity of biopharmaceutical drugs for its clients, the company said Wednesday.
"With the launch of S-CHOice, our biotech customers will have a better and an expanded option for successful biologics development with higher quality and productivity," Yang Eun-young, head of Samsung Biologics' contract development organization (CDO) business, said during an online launching event.
Cell lines act as living factories for biopharmaceutical drugs, determining the productivity of the drugs. Selecting a cell line is regarded as the first step of biopharmaceutical drug development, and a high-performing cell line plays a pivotal role in lowering costs.
Samsung Biologics said S-CHOice demonstrates improved titers by up to double industry average, with its yields exceeding 7 grams per liter for standard monoclonal antibodies. Also, it maintains high cell viability with over 90 percent 21 days after launching a fed-batch study, which is higher than the industry average of 14 days.
Along with higher productivity, S-CHOice has a speedy cell division of 18-20 hours, which is quicker than the average 24 hours for its rival companies' technologies. This shortens the cell line development timeline by a month from the industry average of four to five months.
And the company said such advantages could provide help to global drugmakers' efforts for substantial progress in terms of the commercially-driven massive development of COVID-19 treatments.
"We are confident that S-CHOice can be one of the best choices for cell line development for COVID-19 treatments and their stable mass production at much lower costs," Yang said, adding the company will also provide attractive payment terms by exempting royalty and milestone payments for clients choosing S-CHOice. "S-CHOice will be available for all of our potential clients at a very competitive price. There will be only a one-time small licensing fee at the time of investigational new drug application."
Samsung Biologics CEO Kim Tae-han said in a statement: "With this advanced, high-performance technology, we can now offer our CDO clients even more promising options in bringing their products faster and better to the market."
Samsung Biologics reached 307.7 billion won in sales and 81.1 billion won in operating profit in the second quarter of this year. Sales jumped 294 percent from a year earlier, while turning to profit from a 15.4 billion won operating loss in the second quarter of last year. Such stellar quarterly performance were mostly powered by the fact that the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) clinched a series of large deals with global pharmaceuticals and biotechs in the first half of this year.
Upon announcing its earnings, the company said it is considering building its fourth plant and second bio campus, as the manufacturing contracts it has won are filling its existing capacities. The company said it will later reveal additional details on the size of investment, capacity and timeframe.
