[NewsSPace=JeongYoung Kim]  It has been reported that Choi Yoon-jung, the daughter of SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won, has joined SK Biopharm's strategic investment team as its team leader.

Recently, SK Holdings, the holding company of SK Group, and SK Biopharm established a task force (TF) for new drug development to create synergy in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields. Choi Yoon-jung has joined the TF as its team leader.

According to industry sources on the 24th, SK formed the TF for innovation drugs on the 22nd of this month with SK Biopharm to create synergy in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields. The TF leader is Jang Dong-hyun, the Vice Chairman of SK Holdings, and the team is scheduled to begin work from the 27th.

Kim Yeon-tae, the head of the Bioinvestment Center, and Jo A-ryeong, the Bioinvestment Center Group Leader, joined the TF from SK Holdings. From SK Biopharm, President Lee Dong-hoon, Director Yu Chang-ho of the Strategy & Investment Division, and Choi Yoon-jung, the daughter of Chairman Choi Tae-won, also participated.

As the TF is in its early stages, no concrete plans have been made for new drug development. It is reported that the two companies formed the TF to find synergy in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields.

However, as SK Group's core resources and experts have joined the TF, interest is growing in the results of the TF in the future.

An SK Group official said, "The purpose is to create synergy in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields and find SK Group's new growth strategy. It is undecided which specific new drugs will be developed."

Meanwhile, Choi Yoon-jung majored in biology at the University of Chicago and worked as a general manager in the Strategic Planning Department at SK Biopharm in 2017. In 2019, she took a leave of absence to gain specialized knowledge in the biotech field and pursued a master's degree in bioinformatics at Stanford University in the United States. She returned to SK Biopharm in July 2021 and is currently working as the team leader of the Global Strategy Department's strategic investment team.

In January of this year, Choi directly checked SK Biopharm's booth at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. SK Biopharm exhibited 'Zero Wired,' a medical device for epilepsy seizures. Zero Wired is a healthcare device that predicts the time of a seizure by analyzing brainwave data using artificial intelligence.

In May 2022, SK Biopharm invested in digital therapeutics company 'Cala Health,' in which Choi Yoon-jung is said to have played a role.