Yesol Hong won the Excellent Research Award at the 30th Annual Conference of the Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (KSCPT), December 1-3, 2022, held at Bexco, Busan, South Korea. The title of YeSol's presentation was "One-year follow-up of patients with COVID-19: Analysis of new-onset disease after COVID-19 diagnosis using Real-World Data". She discussed the results of an analysis of the occurrence of disease in patients with COVID-19 over a year using two different real-world data sets. One of her analysis results was a nation-wide study, which was significant in that it included the largest number of study subjects among the studies analyzing the post-COVID-19-condition in Korea. Jung Hyun Won equally contributed to this study with Professor Howard Lee serving as the principal investigator.
Additionally, Siun Kim, Yoona Choi, David Seung U Lee also presented their research through poster exhibition at the conference.
Full presentations can be watched at the following YouTube links:
YeSol had the honor to deliver oral presentation and won the Excellent Research Award at 2022 fall conference hosted by the Korean Society of Medical Informatics(KOSMI). YeSol has presented her work entitled "Effectiveness and safety of sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors(SGLT2i) added to mono, dual or triple treatment in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus(T2DM)". She discussed the additive efficacy in glycemic control and the tolerability of SGLT2i in T2DM patients when combined with other antihyperglycemic agents, such as metformin, sulfonylureas, and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors using real-world data. Yoona Choi, TaeKyu Chung, and Yoomin Jeon also contributed to this study as co-researchers, with Professor Howard Lee serving as the principle investigator.
“Strategies for New Drug Development in Korea”, coauthored by Yoona Choi, Prof. Howard Lee, Jung-Hyun Won, and Yesol Hong, was published on May 16, 2022. In this book, the authors analyzed the current status of new drug development in Korea from three perspectives, each starting with the letter E, i.e., exploration (from discovery to preclinical development), exploitation (clinical development and regulatory approval), and expedition (fast access to new drugs by patients). In this approach, the authors have tried to identify the key areas to improve, and suggested strategies to accelerate new drug development in Korea through a business ecosystem window.
This book aimed to answer following three questions.
The first question the book tries to answer was “Unlike semiconductor, smartphone, and K-Pop, why have Korean new drug development endeavors not worked at its full potential in the global market?” After briefly explaining the processes of new drug development, the book discusses how and why important new drug development is, followed by an in-depth discussion as to what went wrong or derailed in Korea before and why in Korea. The book also summarizes capabilities and resources for each process of new drug development and where Korea is lacking behind.
The second question to answer through the book was “How can Korea improve and accelerate patient access to innovative new drugs?” The book shows how delayed drug approval and reimbursement have been in Korea by comparing the drug approval systems in Korea with those in several developed countries, and by focusing on the inefficiency of the current drug pricing and reimbursement systems in Korea. The authors have proposed several new policies to ‘expedite’ patient access to new drugs in Korea.
Lastly, the book asks “How can Korea write success stories in drug development?” For this question, the book summarizes first the current status ‘as-is’ and proposes a future as ‘to-be’ from the business ecosystem perspective. The book then discusses how those ‘to-be’s can be accomplished.
The book is currently available at various off-line and on-line book stores such as Yes24 and Kyobo book.
On April 15th, CCADD’s research proposal was selected for the 2022 1st Health and Medical Technology R&D Project by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. CCADD proposed to develop a disease registry and generate real-world evidence using electronic medical record (EHR)-based real-world data (RWD) for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), and was finally chosen as one of the nine winners out of total 31 candidates. The total research fund amounts to eight hundred and fourteen million Korean won or six hundred and forty thousand U.S. dollars. For this project, CCADD will collaborate with the Medical Informatics lab of the College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea (PI: Prof. In Young Choi) as well as hemato-oncologists from the Department of Pediatrics at Seoul National University Hospital and The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital.
CCADD and the research team officially kicked off this project through the initiation meeting on May 19th. In this research, the team will develop a disease registry database for pediatric ALL using real-world data in the clinical data warehouse (CDW) of Seoul National University Hospital and Catholic University Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital. And they will also conduct three observational studies using CDW or common data model to generate real-world evidence for pediatric ALL.
The team members, Yoona Choi, Siun Kim, YeSol Hong, Jung-Hyun Won, and Prof. Howard Lee anticipate that this research would provide CCADD with an opportunity to leap forward as a frontrunner in the field of real-world data utilization. And they all look forward to contributing to improvements in clinical outcomes of pediatric patients with ALL at the conclusion of this project.
A column by Prof. Howard Lee, which provided an overview of the issues in drug development in Korea and proposed new strategies to address them, was published at the Op-Ed section of Hankyung, a daily newspaper focusing in economics and finance. In his column, Prof. Lee explained why Korea has not been quite successful in drug development in comparison with its accomplishments in other areas such as semiconductor, automobile, smart phone, and even the content industry these days including K-Pop and K-drama. "There is no drug that has shown commercial viability although >30 new drugs have been developed and approved in Korea since early 2000", Prof. Lee, summarized. "First, and foremost, the business ecosystem has to be revamped", Prof. Lee emphasized, "in order for Korea to show any global leadership in drug development."
Prof. Lee's column was based on a recent report written by Yoona Choi (lead author), Jung-Hyun Won, YeSol Hong, and himself, which will be published as a stand-alone book early next year. Prof. Lee's column can be accessed by clicking this.
Prof. Howard Lee chaired a forum, organized and sponsored by DailyPharm, an online-only journalism company focusing on the pharmaceutical industry, on April 12, 2021. The title of the forum was 'Reimbursement System for High-Priced Drugs in Korea', which has become an issue as more and more advanced therapeutics such as cell and/or gene therapies are introduced as a breakthrough treatment option. The forum had four panelists, three of whom represented the pharmaceutical industry and one the Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare.
It was a coincidental and timely event because Prof. Lee and Yoona Choi have been working an a research project with an aim to increase patient access to new drugs in Korea. This project was sponsored by the Future Health Network, and the second round of the research project is under discussion. The results of the first round of the project has been published in a peer-reviewed Journal as a research article.
The details of the forum can be read and watched here.
Prof. Howard Lee and some CCADD members including Yoomin Jeon, Yoona Choi, and YeSol Hong visited AstraZeneca Korea (AZK) on December 3, 2020. AZ is a research-intensive pharmaceutical company based in the UK and has recently developed a vaccine against COVID-19. AZK invited Prof. Lee to a big data seminar series, and he talked about the role of medical big data including real world data and artificial intelligence (AI) in drug discovery and development. Prof. Lee also discussed how pharmaceutical companies could prepare themselves for the active and efficient adoption of big data and AI technologies for the day-to-day drug development activities.
Yoona and YeSol are actually a former employee to AZK, in the departments of medical affairs and marketing, respectively. Thus, this visit was a kind of homecoming, and everyone welcomed them.The visit was also a great opportunity for CCADD to introduce its research fields and capabilities to pharmaceutical companies. This opportunity will enable CCADD for exploring many collaboration projects with those who are involved in actual drug development, which will certainly fill a gap for CCADD such that academic research is well aligned with the reality.
Yoona Choi and Prof. Howard Lee have recently released a 66-page white paper, titled “Policy Suggestions to Improve Patient Access to New Drugs in Korea”. This white paper was supported by a research grant from the Future Health Network (FHN), a public relations organization that has a strong interest in various cultural, societal, and systemic regulatory-political issues in Korea in association with health care.
Through this paper, Yoona and Prof. Lee overviewed the past and current policies and regulations that have governed new drug access and pharmaceutical spending in Korea. Based on this overview, they critically assessed the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of those governmental policies in increasing patient’s access to new drugs while keeping health care expenditure low. This critical analysis has enabled Yoona and Prof. Lee for coming up with practical policy suggestions to enhance the drug access for patients in Korea.
Yoona and Prof. Lee have approached the access issues in two perspectives: approval lag (or availability) and reimbursement lag (or affordability). They found out that various regulatory interventions employed vehemently by the Korean government to curb pharmaceutical spending has exerted little, if not none, impact on reducing health care expenditure nationwide while those measures have unanimously prevented patients from getting access to new drugs, indispensable for their lives. Yoona and Prof. Lee identified four areas to improve drug access in Korea: flexible incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) threshold, alternative cost-effectiveness evaluation, appropriate rationing of pharmaceutical finance, and establishment of funding source other than the national health insurance.
Before finalizing the white paper, Prof. Howard Lee presented its summary in the board of directors meeting of FHN on July 23rd. The final version of the white paper, which incorporates all of the feedbacks and discussions in the meeting, can be downloaded by clicking this.
Through this commentary, the authors overviewed the major shortcomings of the current clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in 3 common chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Furthermore, the authors offered new perspectives on the adequate and innovative use of common data model (CDM)-based real-world data (RWD) to complement the existing CPGs.
This was actually based on the authors' work for the previous application to the request for proposal on the development of CDM-based CPGs and treatment algorithm from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of Korea in last March. Though the authors failed to win the project, despite of their concerted efforts in preparing the proposal for almost a month, they came to realize the strong potential to utilize CDM-based RWD to improve the current randomized controlled trials-based CPGs. The gained collective understanding, knowledge, and insights were successfully welded into the commentary.
Yoona Choi, R. Ph, joined CCADD as a graduate student at the Department of the Transdisciplinary Studies, Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University. Yoona graduated from Pusan National University (2004-2008) with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy in 2008, and has worked in several global pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Astellas, Bayer and AstraZeneca for 12 years, particularly in the field of oncology drug development.
Based on her experience of working in the area of precision medicine in oncology, she wants to further study the use of artificial intelligence or big data for clinical drug development at CCADD, hoping that great drugs can reach to the optimal patients earlier.
On December 5, 2019, CCADD had a 2nd year-end workshop at the LAKAI Sandpine resort in Gangneung city. The workshop was not only attended by the existing CCADD members, but also by the prospective student Yoona Choi. The aims of the workshop were to overview, evaluate, and celebrate the achievements of year 2019, to set up new goals for 2020, and to build up team spirit among all the current and future lab members. The workshop included 9 presentations, the theme of which covered the milestone and future of CCADD, administration review, talent acquiring strategies, and educational and research activities.
After the workshop, Siun Kim, a 2nd year Ph.D. student at CCADD, who happens to be a talented dancer taught a couple of basic choreograph. The song used for the dance cover was 'Let's Groove' by Earth, Wind & Fire. Although many were new to dancing, everyone truly enjoyed dancing. At first, many felt so awkward about their moves, but soon after, everyone moved to the music and enjoyed the session.
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