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Genexine, ToolGen Merger Collapses Amid Stock Drops, But Collaboration Still Planned

 
• By Jung Won Shin

The planned merger between Genexine and ToolGen, which was poised to create a major Korean biotech entity, has collapsed amid recent generally weak investor sentiment over the sector. But the two sides will maintain their collaborations for new drug development going forward, with a focus on gene and cell therapies.

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Genexine,ToolGen Fail To Cross Last Merger Hurdle • Source: Shutterstock

Genexine Inc.and ToolGen Inc.’s merger plan has met a final unexpected obstacle – the bearish turn of the stock market – and failed to go through despite high expectations in the South Korean pharma industry that it would create a large biotech group with a combination of immunotherapy and DNA vaccine technologies as well as genome editing technology.

After announcing the merger in June, the two companies held shareholder meetings in July and approved the plan. But the deal was scuppered because recent weak investor sentiment over pharma/biotech...

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