Celltrion Launches Korea

Celltrion is joining hands with Japan’s largest bio cluster to establish a public-private cooperation model that helps promising bio startups enter the global market.

Celltrion announced on Sep. 8 that it will fully promote the ‘2026 KBIC-Celltrion Global Scale-up Program’ jointly with Japan’s Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster (KBIC). This project is the first public-private cooperation open innovation program jointly planned and operated by a domestic company and a Japanese bio cluster. Both sides held an offline briefing session at the LINK-J building in Tokyo on September 8 and shared specific execution plans.

The target for support is bio startups possessing innovative technologies, and the program will focus on recruiting in the fields of antibodies, peptides, small molecule compounds, and anti-aging that can be linked to Celltrion’s technology demands. The recruitment notice will proceed from this month until December, and the plan is to select the final two companies in March next year through document and presentation screenings. The selected companies will go through a customized incubation process for technology verification and business capability advancement throughout the year 2027.

Celltrion will take full charge of technology advisory and mentoring based on the pharmaceutical research and development, approval, production, and global commercialization know-how it has accumulated over the past 20 years. In particular, the company plans to focus on increasing the practical commercialization potential of startups by utilizing its cooperation networks with the government, local governments, and venture capitals. It is also exploring opportunities for joint research with the selected companies and expects the achievement of discovering next-generation pipelines.

KBIC will support expert matching and consulting through its operating agency, the Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation at Kobe (FBRI). This is a method of providing a customized accelerating program for each company, ranging from research and development to patents, intellectual property rights, and investment attraction strategies. Both sides will also perform a bridge role to help promising technologies lead to actual investments rather than remaining at the research stage by holding one-on-one meetings with domestic investment institutions and a demo day.

This cooperation is the result of the open innovation activities that Celltrion has consolidated in Japan since 2023. In the meantime, the company has expanded its contact points with the local bio ecosystem by establishing a base office in Kobe and expanding networking with the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and others.

A Celltrion official stated that this program will become a new cooperation model combining the strengths of Korea and Japan, and revealed the plan to continuously step forward in creating an open innovation ecosystem so that newly established companies possessing innovative technologies can leap into the global market. # Celltrion Launches Korea-Japan Bio Startup Program