Yuhan’s chief scientific officer shares why the leading Korean pharma firm is stepping up its open innovation activities and how this is helping to transform the company into a more global and R&D-based enterprise.

Major Korean firm Yuhan is seeing progress across multiple novel drug candidates licensed out to global partners, with two now entering pivotal trials. An innovative therapy for degenerative disc disease licensed to Spine BioPharma has received an FDA nod for a Phase III program and may change the standard of care for chronic low back pain patients.

Private Company Edition: Clover’s $230m financing was the largest of recent mega-rounds. Century Therapeutics ($160m), Vividion ($135m) and eGenesis ($125m) also raised big rounds and investors Foresite Capital ($969m), Sofinnova Partners ($540m) and OMX Ventures ($150m) raised new VC funds. 

Executives expect the changes wrought by necessity in the face of a global pandemic to have lasting effects, both positive and negative, on the biopharma sector. Here they share their predictions for the coming year.