GEN İlaç ve Sağlık Ürünleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (GEN), a leading speciality pharmaceutical company is investing in RS Araştırma Eğitim Danışmanlık İlaç San. Tic. A.Ş. (RS Research), a clinical-stage biotechnology start-up that is developing brand new drug candidates for cancer patients. Our synergy will give wings to RS Research’s clinical development of its pipeline which is based on an innovative drug delivery platform technology.
RS Research has discovered a novel drug delivery platform with which 5 different development programs are currently ongoing in various preclinical and clinical stages for therapies to treat patients with lung, breast, prostate, pancreas, and ovarian cancers. This novel platform provided a higher efficacy with a better safety profile in preclinical studies and the leading drug candidate developed by using this groundbreaking technology is currently in Phase I clinical trial in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Lung cancer is the leading cause of death of all cancers in Türkiye and the world, with nearly 2 million deaths in 2020. According to the research published by GlobalData, the NSCLC market is estimated to reach 16.9 Billion USD as of 2025. Despite the continuous research and innovative treatment alternatives, there is still a significant unmet medical need for more effective therapies for patients with cancer. Therefore, GEN and RS Research are aiming to develop novel national cancer drugs and provide patients access to these drugs all over the world.
This investment by GEN is also a remarkable milestone that contributes to GEN’s globalization strategy. Following successful completion of the development program for these novel molecules, GEN has the first refusal commercial rights in Türkiye, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) including Russia, and the Middle East & North Africa (MENA).