JW Bioscience, a subsidiary of JW Life Science, announced on Jan. 18 that it has signed a strategic investment contract with One BioMed, a Singapore-based molecular diagnostic company.
With this contract, JW Bioscience acquired a 3.4 percent stake in One BioMed and secured domestic copyright on One BioMed's point of care test (POCT) products currently under development.
The investment by JW Bioscience will be used to develop One BioMed's next-generation molecular diagnostic devices and reagents.
One BioMed is a company established by spin-off from the Singapore Science and Technology Agency (A*STAR) in 2015, and has advanced platform needed for silicon optical element sensing technology and development of field diagnostic molecular inspection equipment such as sample pre-processing, gene extraction, target amplification, and signal measurement.
With this investment, JW Bioscience will expand its business area to molecular diagnosis from the field of existing immunochemistry and clinical chemistry diagnosis.
"JW Bioscience is developing innovative diagnostic kits that can detect severe incurable diseases such as sepsis and pancreatic cancer early," a JW Bioscience official said.
"We will strengthen our competitiveness in the rapidly growing in vitro diagnostic market by expanding networks with companies that have innovative technologies," he added.
Meanwhile, JW Bioscience was incorporated as a subsidiary of JW Life Sciences late last year. Based on its stable financial strength, JW Life Science plans to secure new future growth engines by increasing R&D investment in diagnostic devices and reagents.
According to data released in 2018 by global market research firm Markets and Markets, the global In-vitro diagnostic market is expected to be 87.9 billion dollars (about 97 trillion won) for the whole of 2023. Among them, the market for immunochemical diagnosis is expected to maintain the largest market by growing from $20.25 billion (M/S 29.7 percent) in 2018 to $27.06 billion (M/S 30.8 percent) in 2023.
