Qurient (115180.KQ) shares rose sharply after the drug developer signed a commercialization agreement with global contract development and manufacturing organization Lonza for a dual-payload antibody-drug conjugate.
Qurient was trading at 21,350 won, up 8.93%, or 1,750 won, from the previous session, according to the Korea Exchange on the 14th. The company said Lonza presented the dual-payload ADC platform strategy the two firms developed together at the 17th World ADC 2026 conference in San Diego. It was the first public disclosure of SYN-duo CC, which loads Qurient's CDK7 inhibitor and Lonza's linker-payload structure onto a single antibody.
Annette Sommer, who delivered the presentation, said current ADCs face limits from resistance and non-response caused by tumor heterogeneity. As a solution, she pointed to dual-payload ADCs that carry two payloads with different mechanisms of action, and introduced Qurient's dual-payload ADC, QP101.
Qurient's CDK7 inhibitor blocks transcriptional activation through the oncogenic transcription factors MYC and E2F while suppressing the expression of homologous recombination repair genes, increasing cancer cells' sensitivity to TOP1 inhibitors.
Lonza's ADC platform has previously been licensed to large pharmaceutical companies including Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim and Bristol Myers Squibb. In June, Innovent and Takeda's CLDN18.2-targeting ADC, IBI343, succeeded in a Phase 3 trial, and the platform is now regarded as validated and close to commercialization. Lonza signed five additional agreements in June alone, immediately after the Phase 3 success, and has concluded seven ADC platform deals this year.
"Through the partnership with Lonza, drug developers around the world now have a path to use Qurient's CDK7 inhibitor payload within Lonza's global network," said Nam Ki-yean, chief executive of Qurient. "We will open the dual-payload ADC platform to the global market to accelerate next-generation ADC development and provide better treatment opportunities to more patients."
Lonza is also scheduled to present on SYN-duo CC at Drug Delivery 2026, an academic conference hosted in London by ELRIG, a non-profit drug discovery community.
