THE KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY, GLOBAL EDITION

Mediaiplus Inc., South Korea’s only provider of data analytics and contract research organization (CRO) matching services for clinical trials, envisions becoming Amazon.com in the clinical trials market.

“Our goal is to be a global marketplace,” said Jung Jihee, chief executive and founder of Mediaiplus, during a recent interview with The Korea Economic Daily. “I want to make our platform a place where our clients can find everything they need to prepare clinical trials.” 

Founded in 2019, Mediaiplus is a Korean startup that provides vital data to prepare clinical trials and a matching service between a pharmaceutical company and a CRO.

The company is the only clinical trial data analytics provider in Korea, said the CEO, adding that responses from its partnering companies for its products are very positive and encouraging.

MEDIC, AI-POWERED CLINICAL TRIALS PREP DATA CURATION

Its mainstay service is subscription-based MediC, which amasses available public clinical data and provides a professionally curated database for clinical trials.

Preparing clinical trials of a new drug or medical device is a labor-intensive and time-sensitive process due to different medical regulations on a country-by-country basis, constant changes in treatments and a stream of new research results.

But most of such data are not standardized, meaning data must be manually collected and sorted into different datasets for analysis.

With MediC, pharmaceutical and medical device-developing companies can obtain only relevant clinical trial data without worrying about any outdated data and expedite their trials.

“Since 2019, we have built our accurate data assets using big data and AI technologies,” said Jung. “With AI, we mine, collect and clean data to turn them into actionable information … and provide insights.”

It offers information about more than 500,000 clinical trial cases in real-time and AI-curated data on diseases, patents, research papers, drugs, companies, regulations and guidelines.

The Korean startup plans to offer a service that drafts a clinical trial protocol via MediC, its CEO said.

CASH-COW FICRO

Mediaiplus also provides FiCRO, a service to find the right CRO for a pharmaceutical or medical device-developing company for pre-clinical and clinical trials.

FiCRO was not a mainstay service in the beginning but has become the company’s cash cow with a stable revenue stream.

The startup has forged partnerships with 160 CROs at home and abroad.

“Through our partnerships, we can learn about CROs’ latest clinical trials and permission status, which are very valuable information to our clients,” said Jung. “Because it helps save costs and offers (CRO) reviews, about 75% of our clients who have used the FiCRO return to reuse it.”

Mediaiplus has been making money from clinical data sales and CRO-matching services since the beta services. The company officially rolled out MediC in the latter half of 2023. 

BEST IN ASIAN CLINICAL TRIALS DATA

There are a few pharmaceutical intelligence companies, but Mediaiplus should be the only one with the best data about Asian clinical data, said Jung.

“(Clinical trial) data in Asia and South Korea have not yet been fully validated. But we have such (validated) data in the region,” said Jung. “We also have been building clinical trial and researcher databases in Vietnam through an ODA program with KOICA and plan to offer similar services in other Asian countries.”

The Asia Pacific region accounting for over half of the global population has emerged as a popular destination for clinical trials thanks to the region’s lower trial costs, access to large patient pools and friendly regulatory environments.  

Of them, Seoul is a perfect place to do medical data business as Korea’s capital city boasts the world’s largest clinical trial protocols, said Jung.  

“The country’s big five hospitals are located in Seoul, and its National Healthcare Insurance Service offers general health and cancer-screening checkups for all,” enabling Korea to hold the health information of its population, said Jung.

But such massive health data is not organized into a database, creating business opportunities, she added.  

BEYOND KOREA

Backed by extensive medical and clinical trial data from Korea and Asian countries, Mediaiplus has been actively seeking to go global since 2022 with more focus on the US clinical trials market, a major clinical trials market given the importance of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

It has forged a partnership with a bio cluster famous for cancer treatment development in Canada, which has emerged as an alternative to the US for clinical trials, to play the role of a regional branch for Canadian drug developers wishing to conduct clinical trials in Asia.

Mediaiplus has been also actively seeking to venture into Europe.

Last year, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Starting Bloch, a French startup specializing in patent information, in the hopes of saving the time and cost of investigating patent information about clinical trials in Europe for new drug development.

It is also in talks with Air Liquide Sante France, a pharmaceutical laboratory specializing in gases for medical use, to cooperate on digital healthcare services, Jung said.

Japan is another global market Mediaiplus is seeking to expand its footing. The neighboring Asian country is one of the major pharmaceutical markets after the US and Europe but is hard to enter due to different regulations from the rest of the world.

The Korean startup is seeking to raise investment in Japan, Jung said.

The company plans to attend the CES and JP Morgan Healthcare Conference early next year to expand its network in the global clinical markets.

SET TO CLOSE PRE-SERIES A FUNDING ROUND BY YEAR-END

Mediaiplus raised 60 million won ($44,330) from a seed round in 2021 from local venture capitalists including Hanyang University Technology Holding Company and Blue Points Partners.

It is currently seeking to raise new funds in a Pre-Series A round from investors from home and abroad and aims to close the round before the end of this year, Jung said.

The Korean startup will spend the new proceeds to hire people for research and development as well as sales and marketing. It currently has 24 staff members.

“There are growing business opportunities in the global (clinical trials) market. The US FDA started emphasizing the importance of racial and ethnic diversity as well as regional diversity in clinical research,” said Jung. 

She also expects the US Biosecure Act passed in September to lead more pharmaceutical and biotech companies from around the world to turn to Korea for clinical trials.

The US Biosecure Act bans the country's federal agencies from contracting with or providing funding to any company working with a “biotechnology (firm) of concern,” targeting Chinese companies.

The global clinical trials market is forecast to grow to $73.2 billion in 2028 from $48.2 billion in 2023 thanks to increasing pharmaceutical R&D investments and a burgeoning pipeline of drug candidates, according to a forecast by Markets and Markets.

Demand for outsourcing of R&D functions to CROs is also growing, especially for biologics and biosimilars, which require specialized testing services.

Key to the market’s growth is the acquisition of enough skilled professionals in clinical trials, advise industry experts.

Write to Sookyung Seo at skseo@hankyung.com

Jennifer Nicholson-Breen edited this article.