Photo courtesy of Daily Post DB

[KOREA DAILY POST=Reporter Sohn JiAe] The Seoul Central District Court has rejected an arrest warrant against former Kolon Group chief Lee Woong-yeol who is allegedly responsible for his company's fraudulent report on Invossa-K.

Invossa is a gene therapy drug for osteoarthritis approved in 2017 by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS). 

The court turned down prosecutors' request to detain the former chief, saying his charges have not been fully explained. 

Lee has been under an investigation into the Invossa scandal. 

The prosecution believes that Kolon Life Science, a unit of Kolon Group, misrepresented ingredients of the gene therapy in the process of obtaining an item approval from MFDS and listed Kolon TissueGene, an affiliated developer of the drug, on the KOSDAC market. 

The court, however, refused to grant an arrest warrant against Lee, due to lack of evidence. 

As almost 900 patients claim they are suffering side effects after injected with Invossa, it is reported that a man in his 50s who was injected with the drug on both knees in 2018 died of acute leukaemia in March just two months after his diagnosis. 

저작권자 © 데일리포스트 무단전재 및 재배포 금지