KAIST

KAIST (President Kwang-Hyung Lee) announced on February 17th that it signed an agreement for cooperation in the bio-medical field with Formosa Group, one of the three largest companies in Taiwan.

< Formosa Group Chairman Sandy Wang and KAIST President Kwang-Hyung Lee at the signing ceremony >

Formosa Group Executive Committee member and Chairman Sandy Wang, who leads the group's bio and eco-friendly energy sectors, decided to establish a bio-medical research center within KAIST and invest approximately KRW 18 billion or more over 5 years. In addition, to commercialize the research results, KAIST and Formosa Group will establish a joint venture in Korea with KAIST Holdings, a KAIST-funded company.

The cooperation between the two organizations began in early 2023 when KAIST signed a comprehensive exchange and cooperation agreement (MOU) with Ming Chi University of Science and Technology (明志科技大學), Chang Gung University (長庚大學), and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (長庚記念醫院), which are established and supported by Formosa Group. Afterwards, Chairman Sandy Wang visited KAIST in May 2024 and signed a more specific business agreement (MOA).

KAIST Holdings is a holding company established by KAIST, a government-funded organization, to attract investment and conduct business, and will pursue the establishment of a joint venture with a 50:50 equity structure in cooperation with Formosa Group. KAIST Holdings will invest KAIST’s intellectual property rights, and Formosa Group will invest a corresponding amount of funds.

The KAIST-Formosa joint venture will provide research funds to the KAIST-Formosa Bio-Medical Research Center to be established in the future, secure the right to implement the intellectual property rights generated, and promote full-scale business.

The KAIST-Formosa Bio-Medical Research Center will establish a ‘brain organoid bank’ created by obtaining tissues from hundreds of patients with degenerative brain diseases, thereby securing high-dimensional data that will reveal the fundamental causes of aging and disease. It is expected that KAIST’s world-class artificial intelligence technology will analyze large-scale patient data to find the causes of aging and disease.

Through this business, it is expected that by 2030, five years from now, it will discover more than 10 types of intractable brain disease treatments and expand to more than 20 businesses, including human cell-centered diagnostics and preclinical businesses, and secure infrastructure and intellectual property rights that can create value worth approximately KRW 250 billion.

The Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan has 10,000 beds and handles 35,000 patients per day, and systematically accumulates patient tissue and clinical data. Chang Gung Memorial Hospital will differentiate the tissues of patients with degenerative brain diseases and send them to the KAIST-Formosa Bio-Medical Research Center, which will then produce brain organoids to be used for disease research and new drug development. This will allow the world’s largest patient tissue data bank to be established.

Dean Daesoo Kim of the College of Life Science and Bioengineering at KAIST said, “This collaboration between KAIST and Formosa Group is a new research collaboration model that goes beyond joint research to establish a joint venture and global commercialization of developed technologies, and it is significant in that it can serve as an opportunity to promote biomedical research and development.”

With this agreement, KAIST, which has been promoting the KAIST Advanced Regenerative Medicine Engineering Center in Osong K-Bio Square, has secured a practical global partner.

< Representatives of the Formosa Group and KAIST >

KAIST’s Senior Vice President for Planning and Budget, Professor Kyung-Soo Kim emphasized, “KAIST has made great efforts to secure an edge in state-of-the-art biomedical fields such as stem cells and gene editing technology, by attracting the world’s best experts and discovering global cooperation partners, and these results can ultimately be linked to the Osong K-Bio Square project.”

SVP Kim then predicted, “In particular, the practical cooperation with Taiwan’s best Formosa Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, which has abundant clinical experience in stem cell treatment, will be an important axis of KAIST’s bio innovation strategy.”

Formosa Chairman Sandy Wang emphasized that this investment and cooperation is built on trust in KAIST’s R&D capabilities and the passion of its researchers. And added that through this, the Formosa Group will practice corporate social responsibility and take an important first step together with KAIST to protect the welfare and health of humanity. She also went on the say that she expects to see the cooperation expanded to various fields such as mobility and semiconductors based on the successes begotten from the cooperation in the bio field.

KAIST President Kwang-Hyung Lee said, “I evaluate this agreement as one of the most important events that will spearhead KAIST into overseas biotechnology stages,” and added, “I expect that this cooperation will be an opportunity for Taiwan and Korea, both of which have IT industry-centered structures, to create new growth engines in the bio industry.” Meanwhile, Formosa Group is a company founded by Chairman Sandy Wang’s father, Chairman Yung-Ching Wang. It is the world’s No. 1 plastic PVC producer and is leading core industries of the Taiwanese economy, including semiconductors, steel, heavy industry, bio, and batteries. Chairman Yung-Ching Wang was respected by the Taiwanese people for his exemplary return of wealth to society under the belief that the companies and assets he founded “belong to the people.”