Kolon TissueGene resumes trading, reaches daily gain limit of 30%

Kolon TissueGene surged 30 percent Tuesday morning, the first day it resumed trading in three years and five months. [NEWS1]

 
Kolon TissueGene is trading at the daily gain limit of 30 percent Tuesday morning, the first day for it to resume trading in three years and five months.
 
Kolon TissueGene was trading at 20,850 won ($14.5) as of 10 a.m. Tuesday, up 29.9 percent from its starting price of 16,050 won. Its shares reached the maximum limit within just two minutes of the market opening.
 
The Korea Exchange decided to resume trading of the company Monday afternoon. The biopharmaceutical company was suspended from the exchange in May 2019 after it turned out that one of the ingredients in Invossa was mislabeled in submissions to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety for approval. Invossa is a cell and gene therapy that treats osteoarthritis.
 
The substance omitted from the ingredients list could possibly cause tumors, civic groups claimed, and Invossa’s license was revoked the next month. The product was undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials in the United States at the time, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) halted the trials.
 
Listed in 2017, Kolon TissueGene shares rose as high as some 70,000 won, which made it the 10th largest company on the Kosdaq in terms of market capitalization. But shares plummeted as low as 8,010 won before the suspension, down some 90 percent from its peak.
 
But the U.S. FDA allowed the company to resume Phase 3 clinical trials in April 2020, which is seen to have been a big contributing factor in persuading the Korean authorities to give it permission to resume trading.

 
The company faced another risk of delisting in July 2020 as an executive was accused of embezzlement.
 
Some 36.02 percent of Kolon TissueGene shares are owned by 61,638 retail investors as of the end of last year.
 
"We will surely repay our shareholders who had been waiting such a long time with trust," said Kolon TissueGene CEO Han Sung-soo. "We will try our best for the successful Phase 3 trials of TG-C [Invossa]."  
 
Earlier in the month, SillaJen shares resumed stock trading after two and a half years over executives' illegalities. The shares reached the maximum daily limit for two consecutive days and were trading at 12,300 won as of 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. 
 
SillaJen shares rose as high as 152,300 won at the end of 2017 on expectations for Pexa-Vec, an anticancer drug candidate.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]