Dur­ing End­points News’ time in San Diego for #BIO22, it was hard to miss all the Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics signs plas­tered along­side the high­way to the air­port, adorn­ing near­ly every lamp post. How­ev­er, ad­ver­tis­ing is not the on­ly place where Sam­sung is look­ing to spend.

Last month, it was re­port­ed that South Ko­rea’s Sam­sung Group raised spend­ing by more than 30% to KRW 450 tril­lion, or around $360 bil­lion, to in­vest in sev­er­al lines of busi­ness in­clud­ing elec­tron­ics and biotech, among oth­ers. Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics CEO John Rim spoke to End­points at #BIO22 to dis­cuss how this in­vest­ment will af­fect the biotech arms of one of South Ko­rea’s largest con­glom­er­ates.

Rim said that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of that mon­ey will be in­vest­ed in­to biotech, but a hard fig­ure was not giv­en to End­points. Rim did in­di­cate that the com­pa­ny is build­ing out a plat­form that will be com­plet­ed around Oc­to­ber, with it com­ing ful­ly on­line next year on the back of the in­vest­ment.

Al­so, the com­pa­ny is in the process of pur­chas­ing ad­di­tion­al land, dubbed Bio Cam­pus Two, which will be ad­ja­cent to their cur­rent 60-acre cam­pus in Song­do, South Ko­rea. Rim said their cur­rent cam­pus is now ful­ly oc­cu­pied and is now in need of ex­pan­sion. This new cam­pus will be planned to be ful­ly staffed with­in the next 10 years and be 30% larg­er, Rim said. Ac­cord­ing to a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing, the com­pa­ny will spend around KRW 426 Bil­lion, or $347 mil­lion, to ac­quire the land for the new 80-acre cam­pus.

While Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics is al­so build­ing out an­oth­er plant in Song­do, la­beled as a ‘su­per plant’ with a $2 bil­lion price tag, Rim said that the in­vest­ment will al­so build out two more man­u­fac­tur­ing plants to bring their to­tal to six.

Rim did not share any specifics on the size or cost of the pro­posed plants, but said the idea is to have sim­i­lar-sized fa­cil­i­ties to what they have now. Rim said they are fac­ing a very ro­bust client de­mand, and the com­pa­ny will look for the right time for an of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment on their de­vel­op­ment. The com­pa­ny will al­so look to in­vest in ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties re­lat­ed to CDO, gene ther­a­py and mR­NA pro­duc­tion.

Rim said that the com­pa­ny will not on­ly be look­ing at large-scale pro­duc­tion but open in­no­va­tion and mul­ti-modal prod­ucts as well.

“The Sam­sung Group has said biotech­nol­o­gy will be the sec­ond arm of growth be­yond Sam­sung Elec­tron­ics. So, there’s a huge amount of fo­cus and at­ten­tion around that area. And Ko­rea is fo­cused on biotech­nol­o­gy be­cause they see that as an on­go­ing growth in­dus­try,” Rim said.

As to why the Sam­sung Group sees this as a greater in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty, Rim pre­sent­ed sev­er­al fac­tors, such as im­prov­ing tech­nol­o­gy, an ag­ing pop­u­la­tion and a con­tin­ued in­crease in GDP over time.

How­ev­er, this in­vest­ment comes at a time when oth­er South Ko­re­an con­glom­er­ates are al­so throw­ing their weight around in biotech man­u­fac­tur­ing. In May, the Lotte Group ac­quired a drug man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty from Bris­tol My­ers Squibb in Syra­cuse, NY.

Rim said bud­ding com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er con­glom­er­ates is a good thing as it speaks to the rapid­ly grow­ing in­ter­est in biotech in Ko­rea. As for fu­ture ac­qui­si­tions in the US, Rim said that while noth­ing is con­firmed, the com­pa­ny will be keep­ing its eye out for fu­ture tar­gets to ac­quire.

This in­jec­tion is ul­ti­mate­ly set­ting Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics on a ma­jor build­ing spree, with deep in­vest­ments in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing and oth­er biotech op­er­a­tions.

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.