The Korean pharmaceutical industry is keeping their eyes and ears on the US president Donald Trump.

The main point of his healthcare policy is to decrease medical budget and provide the largest benefits to Americans in accordance with ‘America first’ policy. But because of his political uncertainty, the analysis of the effect to Korean pharmaceutical industry is extremely divided.

Analyst Bora Chung at Korea Investment & Securities said it is highly likely to decrease the prices of drugs based on his words to decrease drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid patients through direct negotiation.

Analyst Geunhee Seo at Daishin Securities considered the administrative order to modify Obama care issued right after his inauguration as his strong willingness to regulate healthcare in the USA. He predicted a law will be enacted to regulate drug prices in the USA.

Eugene Investment & Securities predicted the key to his healthcare policy lies in strengthening market autonomy. And his policy will provide opportunities to Korean pharmaceutical companies that have focused on biosimilar and anticancer drugs.

Analyst Jinhee Kwak at Eugene Investment & Securities said, “his policy will have a positive effect on companies that develop less competitive and high unmet needs drugs. In fact, CEO Joe Jimenez at Novartis said in the Davos forum the abolishment of the Obama care may be positive to both industry and pharmaceutical companies by increasing accessibility to medical supplies.”

It will especially provide opportunities to Celltrion and SamsungBioLogics that have concentrated on the biosimilar field, Hanmi Pharm and Dong-A ST that have focused on anticancer drugs.

Actually, Celltrion won the case in the patent dispute with Janssen and removed barriers to release the drug to treat autoimmune disease, Remsima, in the USA. It held a launching show about Remsima with its partner Pfizer in the USA.

Hanmi Pharm was in trouble last year, but made a counterattack by introducing double-antibody platform technology for the next generation, PENTAMBODY in the 35th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

PENTAMBODY is in the spotlight because this is the technology used for antidiabetics, targeted anticancer drugs, immune anticancer drugs etc.

Dong-A ST transferred the technology to develop anticancer drugs, ‘DA-4501’ that the company was developing to the subsidiary of Abbvie, Abbvie biotechnology last year.

Though the technology was at the development stage of drug candidates, the company made a contract worth of $520 million.