INCHEON — Songdo, the world's largest biopharmaceutical manufacturing base, is shifting away from an industrial structure centered on contract development and manufacturing to become a global hub for innovative drug research and development. The Incheon Metropolitan Government plans to accelerate efforts to nurture promising biotech startups and build an artificial intelligence-based drug discovery ecosystem in partnership with global pharmaceutical giants, leading domestic companies and the central government.
The city held the 2026 AI Bio Drug Discovery Global Summit on the 23rd at the Inspire Entertainment Resort on Yeongjong Island, where it formally declared its vision of becoming a world-class hub for next-generation AI-driven drug development.
The summit marks the start of the biotech pillar of the "ABC+E" strategy — artificial intelligence, bio, culture and energy — the core future-industry plan of the city's ninth popularly elected administration. The aim is to move beyond serving as a manufacturing base and build a global drug development ecosystem that creates high-value original technology by combining biotechnology with AI.
The driving force is open innovation that brings together global drugmakers and leading domestic biotech companies. At the opening ceremony, the Incheon Metropolitan Government, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Samsung Biologics and Eli Lilly and Co. signed a four-way memorandum of understanding to build an innovation ecosystem at the Songdo bio cluster.
Under the agreement, the world's seventh Lilly Gateway Labs will be established at Songdo's second bio campus. It will be the third country to host the facility, after the United States and China. Samsung Biologics will build and operate the Samsung Biologics C-Lab Outside infrastructure, with a total floor area of about 11,570 square meters, targeting completion in 2027. Lilly will provide on-site mentoring from its headquarters research staff and access to its global R&D network. The two companies plan to nurture up to 30 promising drug development startups by 2027.
Lilly Gateway Labs is a biotech startup incubation platform that Lilly first launched in South San Francisco in 2019. Companies based at its sites have attracted $3 billion in investment and advanced more than 50 therapeutic pipelines, a record that has validated the model.
Policy support from the central and local governments will follow. The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the city agreed to help identify promising biohealthcare companies, support the growth of tenant firms, and back startup and research infrastructure in Songdo along with government-linked projects. The four parties will also push to form a joint working group to carry out specific cooperation projects.
About 250 officials from biotech industry, academia, research institutes and government at home and abroad attended the event, including Incheon Mayor Park Chan-dae, Eli Lilly Korea General Manager Seiya Komatsu, Lilly Gateway Labs Vice President Verena Stocker and Celltrion CEO Seo Jin-seok. Participants discussed the shift in the drug development paradigm driven by AI and ways to expand global cooperation.
"Today's summit is a historic turning point at which Songdo, the heart of Korean biotech, moves beyond world-class manufacturing capacity to become a global hub for original-technology R&D that directly creates high-potential new drugs," Park said. "We will actively support the innovation platform created by global drugmaker Lilly and Samsung Biologics, a leading Korean company, to make Incheon the world's No. 1 biotech city."