‘K-Bio lab hub’ is a model that has benchmarked ‘LabCentral’ the bio startup support institute of Boston which is famous for producing ‘Moderna’. 250 billion won of public fund is estimated to be put in.

The COVID-19 situation has increased the importance of bio industry and new treatment technology. As a result the need of renovation in infrastructure that bio startups may grow fast has developed.

The government has established the ‘K-bio lab hub fostering plan’ and last 10th of March confirmed it at the ‘The 6th innovation BIG3 forwarding conference’. Consequently a contest has made to decide the candidate area.

The candidate area is first evaluated by paper and field examination and then finally decided by presentation. Last May as the contest received applications 11 local governments which were Gyeonggi-do Incheon Gangwon Chungcheongbuk-do Daejeon Gyeongsangbuk-do Jeollabuk-do Jeollanam-do Gyeongsangnam-do Busan and Jeju. After the paper and field examination Gyeongsangnam-do Daejeon Incheon Jeollanam-do and Chungcheongbuk-do were left for presentation.

In the end July 9th Songdo of Incheon has been decided as the final candidate. The area is home for representative anchor bio enterprises such as Samsung Biologics and Celltrion. Also research institutes and hospitals like the Severance hospital of Songdo which is going to be built at the year 2026 are integrated. This satisfies the need of networking between enterprises research and academic institutes and hospitals for K-bio lab hub. Also the city is providing the site for free and is planning intense financial aid.

Kang Sung-cheon Vice-minister of Ministry of SMEs and Startups said that they invited the most qualified professionals of bio industry opened contest instead of making one-sided decision operated two evaluation teams to cross-check the result and announced criteria in advance to secure objectivity and fairness. He added that the K-bio lab hub is a institute for the whole country that potentially supports every bio businesses which is expected to be a space of collaboration to nurture unicorns of bio industry.

Kim Hee-chan head of the evaluation committee said that the committee had a huge responsibility that the evaluation would decide how the next hundred years of Korean bio industry will look like. He added that they decided Songdo of Incheon because it was the place that may succeed like LabCentral having collaborative potential of universities hospitals and bio companies.

‘K-bio lab hub will apply for preliminary feasibility studies late this year and if it is confirmed construction work will be done during ’23 to ’24 and would start operating in ’25.