Yang Yoon-sun
CEO of Medipost
Yang Yoon-sun is the founder and CEO of Medipost, the developer of Cartistem, the world’s first allogeneic stem cell drug. The company is now working to develop drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and bronchopulmonary dysplasia.
Ever since Hwang Woo-suk’s fraudulent stem cell research a decade ago, the Korean public has become wary of anything associated with the phrase “stem cell.”
In recent years, scientists have made meaningful progress in clinical care using stem cells, yet doubts still persist: will stem cell research deliver what it promised and conquer some of the incurable illnesses of our time? Ask this question to Dutch football manager Guus Hiddink, who completely recovered from serious osteoarthritis in his right knee, thanks to Cartistem, the world’s first allogeneic stem cell drug. “Every time we met, he expressed his gratitude, saying the drug gave him a second life,” Yang Yoon-sun, the founder and CEO of Medipost, Cartistem’s developer, said in an interview. “What happened to him shows what stem cells are capable of.” Stem cells are not a panacea, but they are one of the biggest and most realistic hopes for patients with many incurable diseases, she said. Unlike other arthritis drugs that simply reduce pain, Cartistem, which is made from cord blood, can eliminate the source of the problem by regenerating articular cartilage. Cord blood is the blood that remains in the umbilical cord after childbirth. It is known to be rich in hematopoietic stem cells, which can be used to treat blood and immune system diseases. Since the drug was developed in 2012, the number of therapies using it has increased from 30 per month to more than 100 per month. So far, more than 2,700 patients have taken advantage of such treatments. According to the National Health Insurance Corporation, more than 2.4 million Koreans suffer from degenerative arthritis. Currently, the most popular treatment for degenerative arthritis is joint replacement surgery, with 70,000 to 80,000 patients receiving the treatment annually.
Once stem cell therapy regains the public’s trust, Yang believes Cartistem will be able to increase its shares in the Korean market as well as in the global one. “No one yet knows the limits of stem cells because we are still in the beginning of a long journey,” Yang said. Medipost’s years of research efforts began to pay off with Cartistem, which has turned many stem cell skeptics to believers, including Alzheimer’s disease expert Prof. Na Duk-lyul at Samsung Medical Center (SMC). “He is now one of our research partners,” Yang said. “He said he now believes the hope of curing Alzheimer’s disease is in stem cell research.” Within a few years, Cartistem is expected to get sales approval in Australia, where the drug is currently given to a limited number of patients with certain conditions. And more countries, including China and India, are expected to approve the drug by 2020. Ultimately, Medipost plans to break into European and U.S. markets with it. Meanwhile, the company is conducting clinical trials to develop cord blood-derived drugs — Neurostem and Pneumostem — for Alzheimer’s disease and bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic lung disorder that is common in infants with low birth weight, respectively. The company believes Pneumostem will be approved for sale in Korea as early as 2017 and Neurostem a few years after. Just as with Cartistem, the company’s next step for these drugs is to make inroads into overseas markets. “The three diseases that we are working on have something in common,” Yang said. “They may not be life-threatening, but they significantly undermine the quality of life.” “I used to think being a matter of life and death is the most important part of medicine. But now I believe improving the quality of life is just as important. I hope what we do in labs can help more people live a better life.”
From a doctor to a drug developer
As a pathologist at SMC in the late 1990s, Yang said she never imagined herself as a CEO.
Treating patients was what she was good at, and the hospital was her comfort zone.
One day, however, her boss asked her to go to the United States to learn about cord blood banks. “Many leukemia patients were struggling to find suitable bone marrow donors at that time and we were going to create a cord blood bank at SMC to solve the problem,” she said. The basic idea of the cord blood bank was to store cord blood for future use by freezing an intact segment of the umbilical cord. Cord blood is rich in hematopoietic stem cells, which can differentiate into all types of blood cells — red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Hematopoietic stem cells are different from the better-known embryonic stem cells, or pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate into any cell in the body. “I was invited by other doctors to create a tissue bank, blood bank and cord blood bank, with a business expert in 2000. Even then, I thought I would work just as a researcher,” Yang said. “As soon as we started, the business expert ran away with the money, which forced me to take the managerial role as a result.” This was how Medipost started. Today, the company boasts the largest domestic market share of more than 40 percent. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, more than 400,000 cord blood units are stored in private cord blood banks in Korea. “Medipost was launched as a cord blood bank. But over time, I started thinking about how to utilize the company’s rich resources for other purposes. That’s how I started R&D for drugs.” Despite having achieved many things she can be proud of, Yang remains humble; she said she neither wants to glorify nor exaggerate what she achieved. “Frankly, I did not start what I’m doing with a grand plan. And more importantly, what we have here is not the result of my smart decisions. Everyone worked really hard and I just played my part,” she said. Pioneering in the relatively new field of cord blood banking and research has been difficult. Nevertheless, Yang said she never regretted her decision to leave SMC. “I think what I’m doing is basically the same thing,” she said. “My biggest joy is seeing patients recover thanks to what I provided them. I get more such pleasure as the Medipost CEO than as a doctor. That’s what keeps me here.”