South Korean firm plans $100 million insulin plant in West Virginia

UNDBIO, a South Korean drug company specializing in diabetes care, intends to invest $100 million in an insulin manufacturing facility in Morgantown, West Virginia.

The project, announced by Governor Jim Justice, is expected to generate 200 jobs in the first three years. The plant is to be located at West Virginia University’s life science campus through a leasing agreement.

West Virginia has agreed to contribute $3 million for every $30 million invested by UNDBIO, up to $9 million, according to the Intelligencer Wheeling News-Register.

UNDBIO says it will seek US Food and Drug Administration approval during the first phase of the project for a once-weekly insulin injection system that it developed in South Korea. The company says it expects to go on to create up to 1,200 jobs in West Virginia.

News of the plant comes on the heels of price reductions from major insulin producers in response to political pressure in the US. Eli Lilly and Company said last month that it will reduce the price of its most-commonly-prescribed insulins by 70% and expand a program that caps patient out-of-pocket costs at $35 or less per month. Sanofi and Novo Nordisk followed with similar announcements.

Several ventures have emerged over the last decade to manufacture low-cost insulin, including small-scale projects serving local communities like the Open Insulin Project in Oakland, California. More recently, Civica Rx announced plans to produce three generic insulins—glargine, lispro, and aspart—in vials and prefilled pens with raw material supplied by GeneSys Biologics, an Indian firm.

A virtually unknown South Korean company getting into the mix in the US raises questions, according to industry observers.

“The whole thing is very strange,” says Bernard Munos, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute and a former strategic advisor to Lilly. He notes that efforts to introduce low-cost insulin products in the US have proven challenging, even for ventures in talent pools such as the Boston and San Francisco areas.

“It’s difficult to find much information about who they are, what they’re doing, and who’s behind them,” Munos says.