KAIST to debut its own pavilion at BIO USA 2026, showcasing deep tech startups

KAIST said it will participate in BIO International Convention 2026 (BIO USA 2026), the world's largest biotech industry convention, which opens Monday in San Diego, operating a dedicated "KAIST Pavilion" for the first time to promote its biotech deep tech capabilities to the global market.

The university plans to showcase a broad range of promising biotech technologies developed in-house alongside innovations from faculty-founded companies. Marking its first standalone pavilion since joining BIO USA, KAIST will present its core biotech platform technologies and commercialization achievements directly to international audiences.

Five promising biotech and deep tech companies founded by KAIST faculty will take part, presenting key technologies poised to lead the next generation of the biotech industry — including AI platforms designed to improve success rates in early-stage drug development while dramatically cutting costs and timelines, systems biology-based analytical technologies and next-generation RNA platforms.

The five participating companies are Nano Aegis (CEO Lim Seong-gap), Thor Therapeutics (CEO Song Min-ho), Hits (CEO Kim Woo-yeon), Biolivert (CEO Cho Kwang-hyun) and Ribotech (CEO Kim Yun-gi).

The companies share a focus on addressing unmet medical needs — a defining trend in the global biotech industry — and are regarded as next-generation ventures with strong potential to achieve tangible commercialization outcomes overseas, including technology transfers, joint research and investment attraction.

Their greatest strength lies in proprietary platform technologies that go beyond reliance on a single drug candidate, enabling application across a wide range of diseases and industries.

The companies hold foundational technologies capable of reshaping paradigms across fields spanning early target identification in drug development, preclinical efficacy validation and advanced materials for medical devices. Built on the expertise of KAIST faculty whose work has been validated in leading international academic journals, the companies offer the technical completeness and credibility that global pharmaceutical companies and investors demand.

During the convention, the five KAIST startups will use the KAIST Pavilion as a base for partnering activities aimed at breaking into global markets. Some have already secured pre-arranged one-on-one business meetings with major global pharmaceutical companies — including Merck, Eli Lilly and Daiichi Sankyo — as well as leading overseas venture capital firms, raising expectations for concrete collaboration outcomes.

"BIO USA is the world's largest biotech business event, bringing together global pharmaceutical companies, investment institutions and research organizations in one place," said Lee Geon-jae, director of KAIST's Technology Value Creation Institute. "Through the KAIST Pavilion and KAIST Night, which we are operating for the first time this year, we will actively support efforts to introduce KAIST's outstanding platform-based biotech technologies and faculty startup achievements to the global market, and to translate them into real technology commercialization and global partnership outcomes."

Meanwhile, KAIST has produced 35 faculty-founded companies in the biotech sector and has completed 24 biotech technology transfer agreements over the past three years, actively pursuing the commercialization of its research. Sovagen, founded by Lee Jeong-ho, a professor at KAIST's Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, recently signed a technology transfer agreement with Italy's Angelini Pharma worth $550 million, demonstrating the global competitiveness of South Korea's biotech research.