이 기사는 2022년 05월 23일 08:06 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

PDC*line Pharma is seeking to go public in South Korea next year to become the first European company to list its shares here.

Founded in 2014 as a spin-off from the French Blood Bank (EFS), PDC*line Pharma is a Belgian-French clinical-stage biotech company that develops an innovative class of active immunotherapies for cancers, based on a GMP-grade allogeneic therapeutic cell line of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (PDC*line).

The company aims to go public in Korea next year, according to industry sources on Friday. There are two overseas companies listed on the country’s main bourse Kospi and 21 on the junior Kosdaq market, according to Korea Exchange.

Most recently, U.S.-based NeoImmuneTech and Singapore-based Prestige Biopharma made there market debuts here.

All foreign biotech firms listed on the domestic stock market are their Korean subsidiaries. They all collaborated with domestic personnel during their listing processes. In PDC*line Pharma’s case, the Belgian-French biotech company itself is going public.

The company has hired Mirae Asset Securities to handle the IPO process. PDC*line Pharma is considering to carry out its listing via the country’s special track like other domestic biotech firms did.

PDC*line Pharma completed its Series B2 round of financing in December 2021, raising a total of €17.5 million (23 billion won) from Belgian and South Korean investors.

The financing round was led by Korea Investment Partners and involved a syndicate of new South Korean investors in life sciences: Alpha Holdings, Brain Asset Management and Hansong Neotech.

Existing investors also participated: Noshaq Group, Sambrinvest, SFPI-FPIM (the Belgian Federal Holding and Investment Company) and SRIW (The Regional Investment Company of Wallonia). The proceeds will primarily be used to fund company’s phase I/II trial with PDC*lung01, a vaccine candidate for lung cancer. (Reporting by Joon-woo Nam)