SK bioscience announced on the 30th that the company’s cell culture-based influenza vaccine, ‘SKYCellflu®´, won the first place in the vaccine category in the ‘2019 Korea Highest Brand.’

Korea Highest Brand is a ceremonial event for domestic representative brands that have created the best value for the year. The brand values are measured based on KBHI, an evaluation model jointly developed by Brandstock and Yonsei University Business Research Institute.

At the award ceremony, marking its 14th anniversary this year, 30,000 consumers and experts´ panel gave a comprehensive evaluation under innovation, differentiation, trend leadership, and product reliability categories.

SK bioscience´s SKYCellflu was recognized as the best leading market brand for the fifth consecutive year by receiving high scores in the evaluation categories of innovation and reliability.

SK bioscience launched the world´s first trivalent cell culture-based influenza vaccine in 2015 in the name of SKYCellflu brand, followed by the world´s first quadrivalent cell culture-based influenza vaccine in 2016. SKYCellflu has surpassed 20 million doses (one dose is one inoculation amount) in cumulative sales in Korea.

The production process of the vaccine is fast and efficient because it utilizes animal cells, rather than fertile chicken eggs. In addition, the SK bioscience production process takes only half the time compared to the conventional production method of using fertilized eggs and does not require any antibiotics or preservatives during the manufacturing process. The process can respond more quickly to any pandemic emergencies.

Recently, a series of domestic and international studies announced that cell culture-based influenza vaccines can provide a higher preventive effect as they are less likely to mutate the viruses that can occur during the incubation process than the vaccines produced in conventional way.

According to the data analyzing the relative effects of influenza vaccines in the 2017-2018 season by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the cell culture-based quadrivalent influenza vaccines showed 11% higher preventive effect than the conventional quadrivalent egg-based influenza vaccines.

SKYCellflu´s cell culture production technology was exported to a global vaccine company in February last year. In April this year, it received the World Health Organization’s first-ever Pre-qualification (WHO PQ) certification for a cell-cultured quadrivalent influenza vaccine.

Jaeyong Ahn, CEO of SK bioscience said, “This is the achievement based on the technological superiority of our vaccines. We will continue to take the lead in promoting human health as a global innovator in vaccine technology.”