Celltrion, South Korea’s leading biosimilar manufacturer, announced Monday that it has acquired rights to a total of 11 generic chemical drugs in the US, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical market.

The company has since early 2019 been pushing to expand its business portfolio to cover not only copies of patent-expired biologics drugs, but also generic copies of chemical drugs.

Its subsidiary, Celltrion USA, has bought the rights for nine other generic copy drugs, other than the existing lines of temixys and linezolid.

Celltrion USA launched Temixys, an HIV-1 infection treatment, in October, and is working to launch linezolid, a copy of Pfizer’s zyvox, an antibiotics used to treat infections caused by multiresistant bacteria.

The company secured the permit for linezolid’s commercialization from the US’ Food and Drug Administration in April.

The nine new drugs include treatments for irritable bladder syndrome, diabetes and cancer, Celltrion said. Applications for their US commercialization is scheduled to follow in due course.

Celltrion USA will directly carry out sales of the generics. 

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)