Consortiums formed with Surgeneex, Pino Bio and Pulse in Myers

Projects cover mRNA eye drops, ADC and anticancer drug development

Three of 10 Ministry of SMEs and Startups grants go to Huons partnerships

The Huons corporate identity logo. [Huons]
The Huons corporate identity logo. [Huons]

Huons has teamed up with three domestic biotech ventures to win selection for a government-backed joint drug development program.

Huons announced Monday that three consortiums it formed separately with Surgeneex, Pino Bio and Pulse in Myers were all chosen as final grant recipients under the drug pipeline co-development track of the "2026 Pharmaceutical Biotech Venture Collaboration-Based Technology Development Project," an initiative run by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and administered by the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (TIPA).

The track is a government support program designed to help biotech ventures and mid-sized or large pharmaceutical companies collaborate to advance promising drug candidates toward commercialization. Huons was named a joint research and development institution in three of the 10 projects selected this year.

The company plans to leverage its in-house chemistry, manufacturing and quality control (CMC), production, nonclinical and clinical development, and regulatory affairs infrastructure to combine each venture's next-generation modality technology and drive the candidates into clinical trials.

With Surgeneex, Huons will develop a treatment for refractory diabetic keratopathy that uses a proprietary lipid nanoparticle delivery system (RX-LNP) to convert mRNA therapeutics — previously dominated by injectable formulations — into a noninvasive eye drop. Huons will draw on its ophthalmology development expertise to handle efficacy and safety validation and establish the target product profile.

With Pino Bio, the company will refine the Phase 1 trial protocol and pursue an investigational new drug (IND) submission for PBX-004, an ITGB6-targeting antibody-drug conjugate candidate developed using Pino Bio's proprietary platform. With Pulse in Myers, Huons will support formulation optimization of a subcutaneous injection and an IND application for Pearl-101, a peptide candidate targeting homologous recombination deficiency solid tumors resistant to existing anticancer drugs.

The outcome amounts to policy recognition of an open innovation model that offsets the research and development risk inherent in early-stage drug materials held by biotech ventures by pairing them with the development and process infrastructure of established pharmaceutical companies, improving the odds of successful commercialization.

"We will work with biotech ventures that each hold innovative technology in different modalities to achieve our shared goal of early clinical entry," Huons Chief Executive Song Su-young said. "We will consistently deliver open innovation results by identifying promising technologies and advancing them into clinical trials."


silverpaper@heraldcorp.com