Genome&Company's GENB-120 Selected for National New Drug Development Program

Genome&Company, a global drug development company, has had its bispecific antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) pipeline selected as a national new drug development project, again demonstrating the value and technological strength of its core pipeline assets.

The company announced Tuesday that its bispecific ADC candidate GENB-120 has been chosen as a drug candidate project under the "New Drug R&D Ecosystem Building Research" initiative of the Korea Drug Development Fund (KDDF).

Under the selection, Genome&Company will receive research and development funding from the KDDF to accelerate preclinical development of GENB-120 over the next two years, including identifying the optimal format and payload. The company aims to secure key data for a preclinical-stage technology transfer early, with a view to pursuing global licensing deals and entering clinical development.

GENB-120 is a bispecific ADC candidate discovered through the company's proprietary drug development platform GNOCLE™. It simultaneously targets ITGB4, a novel target identified through the platform, and TROP2, an established oncology target. Both targets are highly expressed across a range of solid tumors — including pancreatic, lung and bladder cancers — while showing low co-expression in normal tissue. By exploiting this characteristic to deliver cytotoxic payloads selectively to cancer cells, the candidate is expected to offer a wider safety margin than conventional single-target ADCs.

With this selection, Genome&Company has had four major pipeline candidates chosen for national projects in consecutive years. The company first received selection in 2022 with GENA-104 at the nonclinical stage, followed by GENA-119 at the lead candidate stage in 2023 and GENC-116 at the drug candidate stage in the second half of 2025. GENA-104, which ranked among the top 10 outstanding projects in 2024, is now being actively developed by UK-based Ellipsis Pharma — a model case of national project support translating into real-world commercialization.

"It is meaningful that GENB-120 — our challenge with a new platform in bispecific ADCs — has been selected for the national new drug development program, following GENA-104, GENA-119 and GENC-116," said Cha Mi-young, head of Genome&Company's drug research institute. "We will accelerate development through this project to prove GENB-120's differentiated potential and turn it into tangible results."

The National New Drug Development Program is a cross-ministry national R&D initiative launched to strengthen the global competitiveness of South Korea's pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Since 2021, it has supported the full lifecycle of drug development over a 10-year period, with goals that include bolstering the domestic new drug R&D ecosystem and generating globally commercializable outcomes.