Seo Jung-Jin – Billionaire

Seo Jung-Jin is CEO and cofounder of biotech firm Celltrion, which specializes in “biosimilars” — affordable generic versions of biological products that replicate natural substances in the human body, such as antibodies. Biosimilars are used to treat chronic and severe illnesses. Resima, for example, is meant to have the same effect as the rheumatoid-arthritis drug Remicade (infliximab). It was approved for sale in Korea in 2012, and in 2014 was approved for sale in Turkey, Canada and Japan. Other Celltrion biosimilars are Herzuma (for treatment of breast cancer), CT-P10 (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) and CT-P27 (influenza). In March 2016, the U.S. approved its biosimilar drug Inflectra, produced with Pfizer’s Hospira unit, as a cheaper version of Remicade, primarily used to treat arthritis and Crohn’s disease. Celltrion, meanwhile, has attracted foreign investors including Temasek Holdings, an investment firm owned by the government of Singapore. A former employee of Samsung Electronics, he went on to work for Daewoo Motor but was laid off in 1999, shortly before the company went bankrupt. Seo founded Celltrion in 2002 and took it public in 2005.

o is the founder and chairman of Celltrion, a South Korean manufacturer of generic medical products made from living cells. The Incheon-based company is publicly traded and had revenue of 949.1 billion won ($839.8 million) in 2017. One of Celltrion’s most successful drugs is Remsima, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

Source:

1. forbes

2. bloomberg