South Korean biotechnology company
Samsung Biologics is a South Korean biotechnology company headquartered in Songdo, Incheon, South Korea. The biotech division of Samsung Group, it provides contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) services to the biopharmaceutical industry.
The company has partnered with pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca.[2][3][4] Samsung Biologics also partnered with Moderna for fill-finish, packaging and labeling of its mRNA vaccine, Spikevax,[5] during the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]
History
Founded in 2011,[7] Samsung Biologics built four manufacturing plants with a capacity of more than 600,000 liters, from 2011 to 2023, making it the world's largest contract-based manufacturer in the biopharmaceutical sector at a single site as of 2018.[8][9][10] Since 2020, Samsung Biologics has expanded to the United States, operating in New Jersey[11] and San Francisco.[12]
In 2012, it established Samsung Bioepis, a biosimilar medicine producer, with Biogen.[13] The company acquired full ownership of Samsung Bioepis in 2022 by purchasing all remaining shares from Biogen for $2.3 billion.[14]
In November 2019, Samsung Biologics became the first contract manufacturing organization to obtain ISO 27001 certification[15] and the first in the Korean biopharma industry to obtain an ISO 22301 certification in May 2020.[16] In 2020, Samsung Biologics introduced S-CHOice, a cell line expression technology, and S-Cellerate to shorten the period for developing drugs the next year.[17][18] The company also obtained ISO 45001, 50001, 14001, 9001 in May 2021 and ISO 37001, 27001, 27017 in 2022.[19] Also in 2022, Samsung Biologics launched S-DUAL, a bispecific antibody platform, and its DEVELOPICK platform, a service that selects candidate materials for new drugs.[20]
Samsung Biologics published its first annual sustainability report in June 2021. The company also joined the Frontier 1.5D initiative, which worked to limit the temperature rise within 1.5 degrees from pre-industrial times.[21] It was added to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index later that year.[22] In June 2023, Samsung Biologics entered a partnership with Pfizer for the commercial manufacturing of Pfizer’s multi-product biosimilars portfolio in a deal work $411 million.[4] A month later, Samsung Biologics entered two deals with Pfizer worth a combined $897 million to produce biosimilar products ranging from oncology and inflammation to immunotherapy at its Plant 4.[23]
