■Pursuing a joint business venture for a personalized healthcare platform through strategic partnerships to contribute to improving national health and activating the healthcare industry.

■"The first case in which a major corporation like Lotte has made comprehensive investments in domestic genomics companies' high-level research and development... It will greatly contribute to establishing scientific evidence and industrialization in the genomic testing market."

Global genomics analysis service and AI-based new drug development company, Theragen Bio (CEO: Samuel Hwang), and Lotte Healthcare, a healthcare specialist company of Lotte Group (CEO: Hoonki Lee), have signed an investment and strategic partnership agreement to pursue a joint business venture based on genomics analysis services. The two companies plan to collaborate on genomics testing service-related cooperation and new business in the future.

Through a strategic partnership, the two companies will integrate Theragen Bio's secure genomics testing service into Lotte Healthcare's personalized healthcare platform. The new platform that Lotte Healthcare will build in collaboration with Theragen Bio is expected to provide personalized prescriptions for health functional foods, diets, exercise, and more based on recommendation algorithms using gene test results and individual health data. Lotte Healthcare and Theragen Bio's strategic partnership aims to improve national health and contribute to the activation of the industry by securing genomics analysis capabilities and enhancing competitiveness.

Lotte Healthcare is a corporation established in April last year with a 70 billion won investment to exclusively handle the healthcare business that Lotte Group has won as a new growth business. As its first project, Lotte Healthcare plans to launch a healthcare vertical commerce platform that provides personalized healthcare total solutions in the first half of 2023. Through collaboration with medical institutions, the platform process will extend from analysis, prescription, management to compensation, with the aim of providing products and services that allow customers to scientifically understand their bodies and effectively manage their health.

Samuel Hwang, the CEO of Theragen Bio, stated that "the partnership between the two companies is a case where investment from a large corporation has been made in a leading domestic genomics company's research and development. In the future, through continuous joint research with the government and the medical industry, we expect to accelerate the establishment of scientific evidence and make a significant contribution to job creation in the domestic and international genomics testing markets, as well as enhancing national competitiveness."

Meanwhile, based on its excellent genomic analysis capabilities, Theragen Bio provides research services to more than 600 medical institutions in Korea and customers in 40 countries overseas, and is a top-tier global bio-specialty company developing therapeutic cancer vaccines. Theragen Bio's personalized disease prediction genetic testing service was launched as "HelloGene" in Korea and abroad in 2010 in cooperation with 14 university hospitals and screening centers and medical institutions. Its consumer-focused genetic testing service, "GeneStyle," has proven its competitiveness by receiving the highest grade in government pilot project evaluations over the past five years, and its microbiome service, "THERAbiome," is being provided to consumers through hospitals in the Seoul metropolitan area.