2024 and 2025 have been the era of GLP-1 obesity treatments. Blockbuster drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound (tirzepatide) are taking the world by storm, showing promise not just for weight loss but for heart disease, fatty liver, and kidney conditions too. But there’s a catch: they all require injections. The peptide structure gets destroyed by digestive enzymes if you swallow them, which means needles—and that limits how many patients can access and stick with these treatments.

Enter BioArchers. Founded in August 2024 by CEO Jung Jin-kyung—a Seoul National University Ph.D. in animal genetic engineering who did postdoctoral work at Johns Hopkins Medical School—the company has built a drug delivery platform that could finally make oral versions of peptide drugs like GLP-1 a reality.

Their secret weapon is NanoLink™, which uses tiny mesoporous silica nanoparticles—we’re talking 50-200 nanometers—that can slip through intestinal cells, enter your bloodstream, and slowly release the drug over time. Jung describes her company simply: “We’re developing a once-weekly oral GLP-1 pill.”

The idea didn’t come out of nowhere. At her previous biotech company, Jung kept fielding the same question from global pharmaceutical partners: “Do you have oral formulation technology?” After hearing it enough times, she decided to build it herself.

Here’s the real challenge with oral formulations: bioavailability. When you take GLP-1 orally, less than 1% actually makes it to your bloodstream and does its job. That means you’d need to pack in more than 10 times the active ingredient compared to an injection—which gets expensive fast.

BioArchers claims they’ve cracked it. In animal studies, their NanoLink™ technology showed bioavailability rates several times higher than competing approaches. Not bad for a company that’s barely a year old. The team draws talent from Johns Hopkins, Celltrion, and Korea’s FDA—what Jung calls “the fastest team” in the space.

They’ve already locked in seed funding and signed NDAs with U.S. biotech firms. Jung’s track record in dealmaking probably didn’t hurt—she’s done global tech transfers before.

Korean biotech companies have been on a roll with drug delivery systems lately, landing major international deals. If BioArchers can keep up this momentum, they could make serious waves in the GLP-1 market and beyond.

What problem is BioArchers solving?

Here’s the thing about oral drugs: most of them have terrible bioavailability. Only a tiny fraction of what you swallow actually makes it into your bloodstream and does anything useful. That’s frustrating on its own, but it creates a bigger problem—you need way more active ingredient to get the same effect, which makes development expensive and often impractical.

It’s even worse for peptides and proteins. Their absorption rates are so low that making oral versions has been basically impossible. That kills development budgets and blocks promising drugs from ever reaching patients.

We’re not just tweaking formulations. We’re fundamentally improving how APIs get delivered, making it actually feasible to develop oral versions of drugs that couldn’t exist before.

How does BioArchers solve this problem?

We built NanoLink™, our oral delivery platform that physically shuttles APIs into the bloodstream and dramatically boosts bioavailability. This isn’t some excipient or coating—it’s a protective nanostructure that keeps the drug stable, soluble, and active longer in your body.

The real payoff is with peptides, which are notoriously expensive and hard to formulate orally. Instead of dumping in massive amounts of drug hoping some of it gets absorbed, NanoLink improves the delivery efficiency directly. That cuts development costs and makes commercialization actually realistic.

The best part? It’s a platform. We’ve designed NanoLink to work with all kinds of drug candidates, and we’ve got animal data proving it delivers significantly better bioavailability than existing approaches.

What competitive advantages does BioArchers have?

Our edge is NanoLink™—it actually solves the structural problem of getting expensive peptides into oral form. Most oral formulation tech out there is just absorption enhancers or basic excipients. They don’t fix the fundamental bioavailability problem, especially for pricey peptides.

NanoLink works differently. We use physical nanostructures to deliver the drug efficiently, which improves bioavailability at its core. That means you need less active ingredient for the same therapeutic effect, solving both the technical challenge and the cost problem.

Plus, it’s not locked to one type of drug. NanoLink is a true platform—we can apply it across different peptides and molecules, which gives us huge room to expand our pipeline. Global pharma companies are noticing. We’re already in discussions with several of them under CDAs to test NanoLink on their candidates.

Bottom line: we’re not just making formulation tweaks. We’re offering a structural solution to oral delivery that can scale across multiple pipelines.

What products/services does BioArchers provide, and what’s their current status?

We’re not a one-drug company. We’re building a platform. NanoLink works on different peptide drugs that couldn’t be developed orally before—it cuts development costs and makes commercialization feasible.

Right now we’re working on BACH01, our reference pipeline. It’s basically proof that NanoLink works, and we can license it out or do tech transfer deals once we hit clinical stage.

We’re also partnering with pharma companies, biotechs, and research groups who have their own drug candidates. They bring us their molecules, we apply NanoLink to improve delivery, and we co-develop from there. We’re running several tracks simultaneously: building preclinical data, refining NanoLink, and talking partnerships with global players.

What’s your target market size and who are your core customers?

The oral delivery tech market is massive and growing fast, especially with demand for peptide-based oral drugs taking off. Drugs that were written off as “impossible to make oral” are suddenly back on the table with platform tech like NanoLink.

We’re targeting four main customer groups. First, big pharma companies trying to figure out how to make their expensive peptide drugs swallowable. Second, early-stage biotechs and R&D shops that need delivery tech from the start. Third, CDMOs and CMOs looking to build out oral formulation capabilities for manufacturing scale-up. And fourth, CROs and research labs running preclinical testing and formulation evaluations.

Because NanoLink isn’t limited to one type of drug, we can expand into tons of different pipelines. The market opportunity is huge.

What is your business model?

We’re set up like most platform tech companies, with three revenue streams.

First, co-development deals. Partners bring us their drug candidates, we apply NanoLink to boost delivery, and we get paid through upfront fees, milestone payments, and royalties.

Second, straight tech licensing for specific pipelines. We negotiate individual contracts with upfront cash and staged milestone payments.

Third, our own reference pipeline, BACH01. Down the road, that could turn into licensing deals or rights agreements.

The point is, we’re not dependent on one drug or one deal. NanoLink as a platform gives us endless ways to expand.

What achievements has the BioArchers team made?

We’ve been laser-focused on proving NanoLink works, and we’ve got animal data showing clear bioavailability improvements. At the same time, we’ve signed CDAs with multiple global pharma and biotech companies to explore co-development opportunities.

We landed government R&D funding to keep advancing the tech and built out an internal research system that lets us iterate quickly on formulation and testing.

Here’s something critical: we know patents are everything in this business. We’ve been building a solid IP portfolio from day one to protect both the platform and our pipeline expansion. That IP strategy is what makes all our business models—co-dev, tech transfer, licensing—actually viable.

We’ve completed initial batch production and diversified our data set, laying the groundwork for platform rollout. Investors and partners are taking notice—they see the technical scalability and business potential.

What makes the BioArchers team competitive?

We can move fast because we’ve got the right mix of people. Our team spans formulation tech and bio-research, so we handle everything internally—from designing experiments to interpreting data to planning next steps. That speed matters when you’re developing platform technology that requires constant testing and iteration.

We also understand the market. We know how to turn early-stage tech into viable pipelines, and we know when and how to approach partners for co-development or licensing deals. It’s not just about having good science—it’s about executing strategically.

That combination—technical chops plus business savvy plus fast execution—lets us juggle multiple tracks at once: partner discussions, product development, investor updates. Not many teams can do that effectively, especially this early. For a platform company to succeed, you need all three. We’ve got them.

Three reasons why you should invest in BioArchers!

First, NanoLink has already proven it works in preclinical studies—bioavailability improvements are real and measurable. Now’s the time to scale this into a global player.

Second, we’re solving a fundamental problem. Peptide-based oral drugs have been stuck for years because of low bioavailability and high costs. NanoLink cracks that nut by physically improving drug delivery.

Third, this is a platform with unlimited upside. We’re not tied to one molecule. NanoLink works across different peptides, which means we can keep expanding into new pipelines indefinitely. We’ve already got CDAs with global companies, so we’re ready to hit the ground running after investment. The infrastructure is there.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

We’re not trying to make one drug. We’re fixing a broken system. Oral delivery for peptides has always been nearly impossible—terrible bioavailability makes it economically unfeasible. NanoLink changes that equation, and the global market wants this solution badly.

BACH01, our reference pipeline, is the proof point. Once we demonstrate NanoLink’s value there, it opens doors to licensing deals and partnerships across multiple drugs. We’ve already got global companies at the table. We’re built to scale, and we’re ready to grow this into a major platform business.