Yeul Hong Kim, R&D President of Yuhan, discusses the company’s transformation from a traditional Korean pharmaceutical business into an increasingly global innovator. He outlines Yuhan’s open innovation strategy, pipeline focus, investment in new modalities and AI-driven discovery, and its approach to global partnerships. Kim also discusses Korea’s pharmaceutical landscape, pricing pressures, and Yuhan’s ambition to become a leading global pharmaceutical company.
Could you tell us about your transition from academia to Yuhan, and how your background prepared you for this role?
I would not say I was preparing for this specifically. I simply had the chance to take it on. As an oncologist and clinical scientist, I was deeply involved in new drug development, in designing clinical trials, and in the basic chemical and product ideas behind moving a candidate through screening, into animal studies, and eventually into humans. When you look across the drug market as a whole, there is always an unmet need waiting to be filled, and always a new therapy trying to overcome the current standard of care.
As a clinician who could see the whole clinical landscape, I was able to identify which potential pipelines might fit a given area and hold real competitiveness against existing treatment, and that perspective is essentially what brought me into this role. Several global pharmaceutical companies are led by physicians rather than pure scientists, precisely because a medical background gives you a particular ability to think through critical situations, market access, and reimbursement, alongside the science itself.
I think Korean pharmaceutical companies increasingly need that kind of leadership too, because domestically, drug prices remain quite low compared with other countries, and the government controls most aspects of health coverage. Korean patients enjoy very low-cost healthcare as a result, but Korean pharmaceutical companies see correspondingly thin margins from the domestic insurance system. To survive over the long term, companies simply have to look abroad, broaden their markets, and build genuine sustainability, and Yuhan has been something of a pioneer in that shift, culminating in our first global blockbuster.
Your first major breakthrough came with the approval of your first innovative drug in the US. What did that achievement mean for Yuhan, and for Korea more broadly?
Looking at the global pharmaceutical landscape, the US is clearly the dominant player, and Europe has several long-established companies too. Japan has a similarly strong foundation, moving from chemical manufacturing into global pharmaceutical companies of its own, and China is now emerging as well.
Korea, however, has a uniquely strong scientific base. Many Korean scientists trained and worked extensively in the US, through graduate school, postdoctoral positions, and professorships, and a great many others gained experience inside global pharmaceutical companies before returning home, either to launch their own biotech start-ups or to join established companies such as Yuhan, bringing that experience with them. That created a genuine convergence of three things inside Korea: strong demand from Korean pharmaceutical companies, deeply talented scientists, and considerable Korean experience working alongside global companies, understanding first-hand how they run clinical trials and develop new drugs internationally.
The starting point for this shift goes back roughly 15 years, to when Hanmi began developing its own pipelines and licensing them out to global partners, demonstrating a genuinely new model for Korean pharmaceutical companies to generate real profit and revenue. Yuhan, at the time, was a fairly traditional pharmaceutical company. We largely co-marketed and co-promoted major global companies’ drugs within the Korean market, which generated substantial revenue but very thin profit, since we were essentially selling other companies’ products domestically.
About 10 years ago, our former president decided it was time for a new direction. He adopted an open innovation strategy, because we did not have an original pipeline of our own at the time. He searched out potential partnerships among Korean biotech companies and found Genosco, whose asset was still at the preclinical stage. We licensed that product into Yuhan and began developing it from the early clinical and preclinical stages ourselves.
About two years later, Johnson & Johnson recognised that our compound complemented their own asset, amivantamab, as a combination treatment, and licensed it. They then ran Phase II and Phase III studies simultaneously, and the product eventually reached market.
Our success motivated a great many biotech companies to approach us afterwards, proposing collaboration or asking us to consider their assets for open innovation. We invested heavily in response, both licensing in promising assets and making strategic investments directly into these biotechs. It became a genuinely win-win arrangement: if a biotech held two or three pipeline assets and we licensed in one while also investing directly in the company, that company’s overall valuation would rise sharply, improving its own prospects for an initial public offering. In the stock market, our investment and licensing decisions came to be seen as a meaningful signal of a company’s potential.
Altogether, we have invested in around 30 or 40 Korean biotechs, at considerable expense, and some of those investments have returned very substantial value, which we have then redirected into further development, both our own and through new biotech partnerships.
Your pipeline today spans oncology, cardiovascular-metabolic disease, and immunology. What guides that focus?
My first task after joining Yuhan was working out where our focus should genuinely lie. I looked closely at where our real strengths were, and those strengths came directly from prior experience: once you have developed a drug in a particular area, you have already built the in vitro experimental conditions, established the relevant animal models, built relationships with the clinicians who run your trials, and formed strong ties with other companies working in that same space. We knew that whole process well, and we were good at it, so we chose to concentrate first on oncology, cardiovascular-metabolic disease, and immunology, and that remains our focus today.
How would you say your pipeline differentiates itself from both big pharma and the wave of emerging global biotechs, particularly in increasingly crowded spaces such as targeted therapies and GLP-1s?
The first principle is genuine specificity, even within a broad area such as oncology. Our first success came from inhibiting the EGFR pathway, and there remain strong targets across EGFR, RAS, and MEK signalling, along with adjacent pathways such as HER2. Beyond target selection, modern oncology increasingly cannot rely on monotherapy alone; targeted agents need to be combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors or cytotoxic drugs. So when we think about future collaboration with global partners, we deliberately develop compounds we are strong in, with combination potential already in mind.
The same logic applies in cardiovascular-metabolic disease. A great many companies are focused on GLP-1 today, but new targets are emerging continually, and we believe we need at least one GIP-targeting asset alongside others. Our broader view is that cardiovascular-metabolic disease, much like oncology, will ultimately require combination strategies rather than single drugs, because these conditions, whether obesity, diabetes, or hypercholesterolaemia, drive damage across the heart, liver, and kidney, culminating in inflammation and fibrosis. Blocking that cascade requires combining different mechanisms, so we are building out that puzzle deliberately, aiming to combine with major pharmaceutical partners while also developing our own assets targeting each piece.
Having our own drugs matters enormously for running these combination trials domestically too. If you only hold one half of a combination, you must purchase the second drug from a competitor on the open market, which is a considerable financial burden; many pharmaceutical companies spend heavily just acquiring rivals’ drugs to run their own trials. Holding both halves ourselves lets us run combination studies far more easily, demonstrate to potential partners that the combination genuinely works, and then offer either compound, or both, for licensing.
That is also why we have built out capability in immunology alongside oncology and cardiometabolic disease. In terms of intellectual property, this becomes a genuinely two-track approach with a larger partner: we can demonstrate synergy between our compound and theirs through a relatively small pilot study, enough to show the combination works, and then either offer our asset for licence outright, or develop the combination ourselves using both of our own compounds before licensing the pair out together, which can generate considerably greater value for us.
Looking ahead over the next 12 to 24 months, are there particular clinical milestones you are looking forward to?
There are several Phase II candidates worth watching. Many major global companies are facing patent expiries and are actively searching for what comes next, particularly in immunology, and a great many have turned toward antibody-drug conjugates. I am somewhat sceptical there, however. We meet many companies in our work, from China and elsewhere, who are all pursuing ADCs.
Realistically, only around one in a hundred pipeline assets ever reaches genuine commercial success, and ADCs certainly have a role in oncology, but so many companies are now competing for the same handful of winning targets that the other 99 will inevitably fail. We see the next wave forming instead around targeted protein degradation, molecular glues, and protein-protein interaction inhibitors, areas with considerably less competition today than ADCs. We have built a dedicated new-modality department within our research institute and are actively recruiting investigators and scientists in that space, which is where we are targeting our next era of growth.
As head of R&D, overseeing a diverse pipeline and a team of around 400 people, how do you allocate resources and incorporate AI into the discovery process?
Research and development is really one continuous process, running from early asset screening through preclinical and clinical development and ultimately into marketing, and everyone across that chain needs to contribute towards the same end. My main task is to ensure that this connection runs without internal barriers, and that everyone, whether in the research institute, clinical division or business development, shares the same underlying goal. If each division pursues its own separate objective, the whole effort suffers. Our ultimate goal is a marketed drug, not simply good science, so we have to think commercially from the outset. Even with a genuinely strong inhibitor against a promising target, we have to weigh honestly whether it can become a viable drug, or whether the risk of failure means we should redirect those resources elsewhere. Working through those judgements with the team is really the core of my role.
That same principle applies to AI. We have a dedicated team within our research institute focused mainly on improving our ability to screen and design molecules more effectively using AI. We cannot realistically cover every application ourselves, and many companies focus on applying AI to clinical trial operations, pharmacovigilance, or document and manuscript preparation. We do make use of external tools in those areas. But when it comes to the core science of discovering and optimising new molecules, we do not want to depend on outside tools. We have therefore built our own AI capability specifically for screening and molecule optimisation.
Korea has traditionally been seen as a manufacturing hub, but is increasingly developing capabilities in biologics and innovative medicines. How do you see Korea’s role in the global pharmaceutical industry evolving, and where does Yuhan fit into that picture?
Korea has strong manufacturing capabilities, particularly in biologics through companies such as Samsung Biologics, but Yuhan’s focus is different. We specialise in chemical manufacturing and are a global player in chemical contract development and manufacturing. We have not focused on biologics manufacturing and do not operate a biologics manufacturing business ourselves. Our larger facilities are built around chemical manufacturing, which is why we have maintained long-term partnerships with companies such as Gilead.
Looking at the global pharmaceutical market, small molecules and chemical drugs still represent more than 50 percent of the market. Biologics are certainly growing faster, but we expect small-molecule chemistry to remain more than half of the market for the foreseeable future, which is why we continue to concentrate on that area. We may participate in biologics manufacturing at some point, but for now, chemicals remain our clear focus. You cannot realistically pursue everything at once, particularly while investing heavily in research and development. Building multiple large biologics facilities and maintaining the quality standards those products require represents an enormous capital investment.
More broadly, the future for biologics is genuinely bright and demand is considerable, but there are also concerns around pricing. Even in the US, there is growing pressure over the high cost of biologics, prompting greater interest in importing biosimilars. With so many competitors now active in that space, prices are likely to come under significant pressure, which could compress margins and returns. Those profits typically help fund further factory investment and expansion, so that dynamic may become more challenging as price competition intensifies. With so many companies simultaneously investing in new facilities and competing to reduce costs, I am not certain how that market will ultimately evolve.
Korea’s pricing reforms are shifting funding towards innovative medicines and away from generics, putting pressure on traditional companies. Yuhan and Hanmi have adapted successfully, while others have struggled. What role do traditional small-molecule and generics-focused companies have going forward?
As I mentioned, we already face real limits on profitability within the domestic market, so going abroad and building genuine global blockbusters is not optional for survival; it is essential. Every major traditional pharmaceutical company in Korea understands this, and all are trying to invest more heavily in R&D as a result. Unfortunately, the funds available for that investment are shrinking, largely due to continued price cuts within the national health insurance system, which puts the whole sector in a genuinely difficult position. Yuhan has benefited from our first global drug launch in that respect, through milestone payments and royalties from global sales, which we expect to grow further and which we can reinvest directly into R&D. That is a real advantage for us.
Yuhan has built strong partnerships with global players such as Johnson & Johnson and Gilead, alongside a strong culture of open innovation. What makes Yuhan the partner of choice for local and global companies?
Our approach is really built on a long-standing belief in progress and sincerity. We build every collaboration on speed, integrity, and genuine progress, and once we form a relationship with a company or a colleague, we tend to keep it for the long term. But that relationship has to be a genuine win-win; if one side is left sacrificing, that is not a sustainable arrangement. We always think carefully about what our partner actually needs, and how we can help them succeed through the collaboration. Sometimes that means proposing something specific, such as manufacturing an off-patent drug ourselves at lower cost so a partner can sell it globally, generating profit for both sides. Suggestions of that kind tend to build genuinely lasting relationships, and that is really the core of our partnership strategy.
Is there anything else you would like global pharma partners and investors to know?
There is one more thing worth mentioning: our medium to long-term goal. Within five years, we would like to rank among the top 50 global pharmaceutical companies, targeting roughly USD four billion in revenue and a position within at least the top 15 consumer-facing pharmaceutical companies.
