WonVantage advises across the whole molecule-to-cell spectrum — delivery systems, antibodies and ADCs, peptides, nucleic acids and engineered cells. The practice is engaged for technical diligence, fractional R&D leadership and product strategy, on fixed scope and a stated turnaround.
Four kinds of client, five engagement formats, one process. Every engagement is run at principal level — senior judgment from scoping through readout, with no learning curve charged to your program.
You arrive with a deck, a data room and a deadline, and no one in-house who can judge the science across a modality the fund does not cover.
You arrive with real science, a small team and a raise ahead, needing senior R&D judgment a few days a month rather than a full-time executive.
You arrive with a molecule or a formulation with real activity, and a decision about which route it should travel — and what evidence that route demands.
You arrive with a US asset to evaluate or a US entry to plan, and need an advisor who reads the science and the room in both languages. A US audience judges a pitch on different terms than a Korean one — that gap is usually the problem, not the science.
Fixed scope, a named deliverable and a stated turnaround. Fees are quoted per engagement.
| Format | What you get | Best for | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red-flag review | A 3–5 page memo with a go, pause or pass readout, plus a call | First-look screening before a partner meeting | 48–72 h |
| Technical diligence | Full report, ranked risk register and questions for management | Term sheet or in-licensing decisions | 2–3 weeks |
| Fractional CSO | R&D plan, milestone tracking, board and investor support | Founders between seed and Series B | 2–4 days/mo |
| Advisory call | Focused answers on a modality, a target or a dataset | A single question, quickly | On demand |
| Advisory or board seat | Scientific advisory board or board participation | Long-term company building | Ongoing |
Fix the decision, the deadline and the questions that matter. Conflict check and mutual NDA first.
Primary data, publications, patents and the landscape, read against the claims in the deck.
Where the thesis breaks: biology, model relevance, delivery, CMC, regulatory path, team.
A recommendation, a ranked risk register and a live call to argue with it.
WonVantage advises on each area below from direct, hands-on work — built at the bench and carried through to a patent, a license, a regulatory filing or a sponsored program, not assembled from the literature. Engagements run from a single modality question to full technical diligence across a portfolio.
Nanoparticles, polymers, self-assembled carriers and injectable depot gels for small molecules, proteins and nucleic acids.
Recombinant fusion proteins, protein transduction domains and functional peptides for metabolic, immune and skin applications — carried through to GRAS and INCI listings.
ADC payload strategy, targeted HSP90 inhibitor delivery, bispecific design and antibody–drug complexes, including industry conjugate pilots.
Delivery of genetic material across mRNA/LNP, lentiviral and non-viral systems, with bioreducible carriers, organelle targeting and stimulus-responsive expression.
NK and stem-cell surface engineering without gene transfer, immune-cell reprogramming, ADC- and antibody-armed NK cells, one-step allogeneic NK generation.
CAR induction inside the body from a recombinant protein, read against the lentiviral and mRNA/LNP routes it competes with.
Full publication record on Google Scholar.
The constraint that kills a program is rarely the same from one indication to the next — and the tools move across them more readily than most theses assume. Each row below names the work behind the claim and the constraint that actually decides programs there.
The deepest part of the record: targeted carriers for a drug class held back by toxicity, ADC-armed NK cells under industry sponsorship, surface-engineered NK and stem cells, and CAR induction in vivo from a recombinant protein.
Immune-cell reprogramming and immunomodulatory delivery carried over from the oncology work — the setting non-genomic surface engineering was designed for, and where engineered-cell approaches are now moving.
Delivery of genetic material and regenerative factors to cardiac and vascular tissue, stimulus-responsive expression, stem-cell surface engineering and injectable depots for local repeat dosing — carried under NIH R01 funding held as sole PI.
Tissue-directed delivery of genetic material, functional peptides with metabolic activity, and route strategy for bioactive ingredients carried through to a commercial filing.
A functional peptide carried to GRAS and INCI, NK surface engineering pointed at senescence markers rather than tumor antigens, and endpoint design drawn from NIH-funded work and study-section review.
Most of the work in this practice has been moving tools across this table rather than inventing new ones. A carrier that failed one indication is often the right answer in the next — knowing which ones survive the move is the judgment being hired.
Not one of the programs below was rescued by running more experiments. Each turned on changing what the problem was taken to be — out of chemistry into delivery, out of the genome onto the membrane, out of a drug route into a food route. The data in hand did not change; the question asked of it did, and that is what moved each program. Names, sponsors and figures withheld where confidential.
Therapeutic progress has moved through four questions, not four product categories. Each era was decided by a constraint, not by a modality — and WonVantage's work has consistently sat on the constraint before it became a market.
Potency was rarely the limit. Reaching the intended tissue, and only it, was — and that put carriers, conjugates and targeting at the center of every program.
Once the medicine became a cell, the hard problems moved to manufacturing, allogeneic supply and whether the engineering step could be simplified away.
If the patient becomes the manufacturing site, the asset is no longer the cell or the cassette — it is the thing that reaches the right cell reliably enough to dose.
Permanent modification is a liability as indications widen beyond late-stage cancer. The next advantage goes to function that can be given, withdrawn and given again.
Joint programs with Korean pharma and biotech, Korea Drug Development Fund (KDDF) funding held as PI, and working hours that land inside the Korean business day.
Member, Korea Technology Advisory Group (K-TAG+) in the US · National Research Foundation of Korea Brain Pool Fellow.
한국 제약사, VC 및 CVC의 미국 바이오 자산 발굴과 과학 실사, 그리고 한국 바이오텍의 미국 진출 전략을 한국어와 영어로 지원합니다.
약물전달, 항체·ADC, 펩타이드, 핵산, 세포치료 전반에 걸친 연구와 창업 경험을 바탕으로 독립적인 과학적 판단을 제공합니다.
한국 업무 시간에 맞춘 미팅이 가능합니다.
WonVantage is a scientific and translational advisory practice working across drug delivery, antibodies and ADCs, peptides, nucleic acids and engineered cells. It is engaged by investors and business-development teams facing an investment or in-licensing decision, by emerging biotechs that need senior R&D judgment without a full-time executive, by ingredient and consumer-health companies choosing a route to market, and by Korean companies and funds moving in either direction across the Pacific.
Engagements are fixed in scope, run at principal level and delivered against a stated turnaround. WonVantage is the operating name of Forever Won Advantage LLC, Dallas, Texas.
Dr. Won is a biomedical engineer who has worked across drug delivery, protein and peptide engineering, and cell therapy — at the bench, as a principal investigator, and in founding CEO and CSO roles at biotech ventures in the US and Korea, carrying platforms from invention through licensing, accelerator programs and seed financing. PhD in bioengineering, Hanyang University.
Judging other people's science is part of the job description. Dr. Won serves NIH as a reviewer on study sections, SBIR/STTR panels and Program Project (P01) reviews, and has held NIH R01 funding as sole principal investigator and Korean national funding as PI — both sides of the table where a program is argued for and taken apart. Dr. Won is a named inventor on US-granted patents licensed to industry, has carried a bioactive peptide to GRAS and INCI listings, and publishes as first or senior author in Nature Materials, Molecular Therapy, ACS Nano, Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Science, Biomaterials and the Journal of Controlled Release.
Conditions that apply to every engagement, without exception.
A written conflict review before anything else. Where objectivity about a program is not possible, the engagement is declined.
Mutual NDA before materials are shared. Client information is never used elsewhere.
Nothing learned through confidential grant or manuscript review is used in advisory work.
Services are provided by Forever Won Advantage LLC, doing business as WonVantage, with institutional approval.
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