Korea biotech’s playbook for success: Orum’s SJ Lee on The BioCentury Show

Globalizing early and developing something ‘totally new’ are keys to evolving Korea’s biotech ecosystem   

Globalizing quickly and gaining a first-mover advantage are the winning strategies for South Korean biotechs as they look to compete on the world stage, says Orum Therapeutics founder and CEO SJ Lee on The BioCentury Show.

Lee’s company, a leader in degrader-antibody conjugates, provides an example of how to run that playbook. Within three years of its 2016 launch in Korea,  Orum Therapeutics Inc. (KOSDAQ:475830) opened an office in the U.S. It now has locations in Daejeon, South Korea, and Lexington, Mass., $120 million raised including its cash from a 2025 IPO, and deals with prominent U.S. biopharmas Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:VRTX) and Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE:BMY), as well as companies in China.

Orum’s initial focus was an intracellular cell-penetrating antibody platform with a lead asset targeting KRAS, which at the time had no approved drugs. When efficacy concerns shelved that plan, the biotech pivoted to degrader-antibody conjugates, an area where it believed it could lead.

“We didn’t want to work on what everybody else was working [on] back in 2019. There were a lot of companies working on site-specific linkers, better toxin payloads,” he explained. “As a Korean company, we do need to focus on very novel science. So we’ve decided to focus on payloads that nobody else worked [on], really worked on well. So that was the degrader, using degraders as payloads.”

Creating “something totally new” is the next step, he said, in the Korean ecosystem’s evolution away from me-toos and bio-betters, one that “requires some time” before more Korean biotechs reach that stage. He believes that the start-up ecosystem in Korea is vibrant enough to help fund innovative ideas.

Going global is equally important, he argued.

Unlike its bigger neighboring countries, “Korea is not big enough for biotechs to have a domestic market as its main commercialization plan,” Lee said. “So biotechs, like Orum have a global plan from day one.”

Singapore biotechs face a similar issue. Companies in both countries aim to turn that limitation into an advantage.

While biotechs in China can use their engineering prowess and large population centers to create best-in-class therapies and generate proof-of-concept data quickly, novel science and international networks appear to be the way forward for smaller Asian countries.

“I think that globalization piece with the first-mover advantage is the winning playbook for Korean biotech,” said Lee.

He also spoke about where Korea fits in East Asia’s life sciences scene, how Western players can get to know the Korean biopharma industry, and what’s next for Orum’s pipeline.