바이오스펙테이터

by Jongwon Jang

Premier Partners and Intervest participated in Series A funding. It is expected to enter a clinical trial for approval of OncoFREE in 2020. The development of follow-up pipelines for hereditary cancer

DCGEN successfully attracted 4 billion won Series A. Thanks to the successful attraction of this investment, DCGEN will accelerate its efforts to conduct a clinical trial for domestic approval of OncoFREE, an in-house Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)-based breast cancer prognostic kit. It also plans to discover follow-up pipelines and speed up the establishment of Singapore analysis lab to enter the Southeast Asian market.

DCGEN announced on December 19th, 2019 that it concluded attracting the investment of 4 billion won from Premier Partners and Intervest, a follow-up investment one year after it had received from the Tech Incubator Program for Startup from MedytoxVenture in November, 2018.

DCGEN is a multigene assay developing startup jointly founded in 2017 by Wonshik Han, Chief of Breast Cancer Center of Seoul National University Cancer Hospital, Hee Chul Shin, a professor of the Department of the Surgery at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, and Han-Byoel Lee, a professor of the Department of Surgery at Seoul National University Hospital. The company is developing various types of diagnostic kits with focus on clinical unmet needs at medical field sites.

OncoFREE is a breast cancer prognostic kit of which the development has already been completed. It can be used to analyze RNA expression levels of 179 genes through its self-developed algorithm and quantify the risk for remote metastasis into scores. The development of OncoFREE was sponsored by the Post-genome project (Ministry of Health & Welfare) and participated by Seoul National University Hospital, College of Engineering of Seoul National University, Asan Medical Center Hospital, and Korea University Guro Hospital.

An investigator-initiated trial (IIT) was conducted by targeting 413 patients who participated in follow-up surveys for five or more years at Seoul National University Hospital and Asan Medical Center to verify the prediction ability of OncoFREE. DCGEN plans to enter a confirmatory clinical trial with the Korea Food and Drug Administration for domestic approval in 2020. In addition, the company is currently collaborating with researchers of Singapore General Hospital to verify the efficacy of OncoFREE in the Southeast Asian population.

Besides OncoFREE, DCGEN is developing a "Hereditary Oncology Prevention and Evaluation (HOPE)" program to assess the risk of hereditary cancer and "Oncodict" to analyze somatic cell mutation specific to breast cancers.

Prof. Hee Chul Shin, the cofounder and CEO of DCGEN, said, "With this investment, we can provide quality diagnostic services to domestic patients and make a concrete plan to use Singapore and Hungary as bridgeheads to enter the European market."

Director of Premier Partners, who led Series A funding, said "The world's first class medical staff of DCGEN has already been successful in commercializing a breast cancer prognostic kit using "NGS-based Multigene Assay" through development of products differentiated in consideration of on-site needs in the medical field for the first time in the world. It is expected to give great help to patients and medical staffs by releasing an expanded line of diagnostic products against various types of cancers including breast cancer.

Prof. Wonshik Han, cofounder and chairperson, said, "DCGEN is the first company that moves beyond creating data based on 'NGS' and develops products actually applicable to patients. We decided to establish the company to offer better treatment to patients and improve the quality of their lives. We will do our best to develop products that can really offer medical benefits.