Biotechnology / Lemonex

Lemonex, a global biotherapeutics and bioengineering firm, is garnering attention with its innovative next-generation drug delivery and biosensor technology on the basis of which it is developing immuno-oncology drugs, antibody and gene therapeutics.

The company has won the 2019 11th Innobiz Company Award sponsored by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and hosted by The Korea Herald and the Herald Business and supervised by PowerKorea.

Lemonex’s core technologies are DegradaBall and Pango. 

DegradaBall is Lemonex’s original technology that is applicable in delivering various novel drug candidates to topical areas affected with illness. Such precision drug administration is credited as an optimal method for antibody therapeutics development.

Existing drug delivery agents before DegradaBall, such as liposome, micelle and exosome, have had persisting difficulties in maintaining a uniform level of particle size and density of the drug. They also had unreliable quality control when left in room temperature.

DegradaBall is the new alternative that covers these shortcomings conveniently and reliably, according to Lemonex.

Pango is a molecular diagnostic and drug screening technology that allows for a fast and precise analysis of multiple enzymatic activities on ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid, or RNA and DNA, through the use of graphene-biosensor.

It can be applied to develop inhibitors of harmful viral enzymes that may cause cancer. It is the next-generation high-throughput screening technology that overcomes the disadvantages of preexisting assay methods, Lemonex says.

The compnay’s CEO Won Cheol-hee has specialized in research on somatic cell nuclear transfer, stem cell, cancer stem cell, immuno oncology, immune checkpoint inhibitor and Fc-fusion protein development.