Republic of Korea and AI Drug Discovery
Republic of Korea and AI Drug Discovery
Revolutionizing Drug Development
REIMAGINED BY #AI : SEOUL, KOREA, by Social Station | Marketing Agency in Dubai “Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.”
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Latest News 🍜
🍜 Oregon Therapeutics & Lantern Pharma Launched Strategic AI Collaboration to Optimize Development of First-In-Class Drug Candidate XCE853 – A Potent Inhibitor of Cancer Metabolism
🍜 AI-powered drug discovery demands investor patience
🍜 DeepMind CEO Targets $100 Billion-Plus AI Drug Discovery Business With AlphaFold
South Korea 🇰🇷 and AI Drug Discovery, accelerating and transforming drug development
✴️ Daewoong Pharmaceutical,주식회사 대웅제약
On February 21, 2024, the South Korean pharmaceutical giant Daewoong (Daewoong Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd, 주식회사 대웅제약) (KRX: 069620) announced that it has completed its own new drug development system using AI, the Daewoong AI System (DAISY). In particular, they developed a collection of 800 million million known compounds, called Daewoong Advanced Virtual Database, or DAVID, and a separate AI system called AI-based Virtual Screening (AIVS) tool to detect active substances targeting specific proteins based on 3D modeling technology. Utilizing both DAVID and AIVS, DAISY allows Daewoong researchers to discover new compounds and quickly predict drug properties, enabling also ADMET (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity) research.
In 2023, Daewoong Pharma and Merck teamed up for AI tech for new drug, to build an AI-based new drug development platform and provide technology support for the entire cycle of the development process. Under the agreement, Merck Life Science will provide the data and programs necessary for the drug development process, while Daewoong will incorporate them into its in-house web-based modeling platform for drug candidate discovery, verification and monitoring. In addition, Merck will support Daewoong with the necessary technology at all stages of drug development using Synthia—the retrosynthesis software powered by AI by Merck KGaA—and the Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) program—an ongoing effort by a health service organization to optimize antimicrobial use among patients to improve patient outcomes, ensure cost-effective therapy and reduce adverse sequelae of antimicrobial use including antimicrobial resistance.
Moreover, in 2023 HanAll Biopharma and Daewoong Pharmaceutical have expanded their open collaboration strategy by investing in Vincere Biosciences, a Cambridge, MA-based company developing therapeutics targeting mitophagy that blends neuroscience, molecular biology, medicinal chemistry and AI expertise. These investments, via the Freemind Investments (FMI) investment platform, foster collaborations around Parkinson's disease therapeutics as well as Vincere's AI platform (Hypothesis Generation, Chemistry ID & Optimization and Patient Selection). Hanall Biopharma (KRX: 009420) is a global biopharmaceutical company with a presence in Korea, the USA, Japan and Indonesia and has been operating a portfolio of pharmaceutical products in areas ranging from endocrine, circulatory and urologic diseases for 50 years.
In January 2024, Daewoong signed an agreement with the Korea Medical Institute (KMI), Seers and Medical AI to supply AI-based electrocardiography (ECG) solutions for public health screening programs. The four companies signed the contract for a period of one year, planning to launch the solution in January 2024. To be specific, Daewoong is in charge of supplying mobiCARE and AiTiA LVSD to eight of KMI’s examination centers nationwide. Seers—the provider of mobiCARE (a wearable ECG solution that can be monitored for nine consecutive days—will supply a specialized system customized for KMI that can test up to 800 or more people per day. And Medical AI, the developer of AiTiA LVSD—an AI software for ECG analysis—aims to complete the software preparations for the point of care service at all centers.
Medical AI and South Korea (의료 AI와 한국)
Additionally, regarding Medical AI 🩻 solutions South Korea is planning to become a medical AI powerhouse. For this reason, the country is actively redrafting its regulations in the AI domain, accordingly in May 2023 the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety of the Republic of Korea (MFDS) and the FDA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to accelerate medical product development using AI. Moreover, in April 2023 the Ministry of Health and Welfare in South Korea introduced ‘The 1st Comprehensive Plan for Development and Support for the Medical Devices Industry’ (2023~2027), facilitating market entry for innovative technologies such as AI and digital solutions, rationalizing regulations and systems, and promoting innovation among corporations in the medical devices sector.
For example, in April 2023 an AI brain imaging device from the South Korean startup Neurophet (an AI solution company for brain disease) got approval in Singapore and in March 2023 Korea approved Coreline Soft’s brain hemorrhage image detection and diagnosis assistance software. Coreline Soft Co Ltd (코어라인소프트) is an AI software developer analyzing CT scans of the chest offering: a lung cancer screening (LCS), a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) quantification and a coronary artery calcification (CAC) system, that collectively they call the B3 system, covering the 3 big diseases in thoracic imaging. They received FDA and Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) clearance for their lung cancer detection software and the company claims that the software has achieved a sensitivity of 92.3% and a specificity of 80.4% in clinical trials. Coreline Soft is the official solution provider for the nationwide lung cancer screening program in Korea since 2017.
On April 3, 2024, Coreline Soft announced it gained FDA 510(k) clearance for its AI-based coronary artery calcification assessing solution, Aview CAC, while raising ₩18 billion (US$13.33M) in a private placement (for a total raised $30.25M). On May 03, 2024, Coreline Soft announced a strategic partnership with DMC Healthcare, a UK based remote reading specialist. DMC Imaging, which partnered with Coreline Soft, is a specialized reading company that provides high-quality imaging services within the DMC Healthcare Group. DMC Imaging provides a wide range of healthcare services GP (General Practitioner) from primary care to specialty diagnostics, increasing its reach and impact.
✴️ Korea and UK 🇬🇧 (한국과 영국)
On November 21, 2023, it was announced a landmark commitment on AI, semiconductors, space and more between the UK and the Republic of Korea. Regarding biology, an agreement between the Milner Therapeutics Institute (MTI) at the University of Cambridge and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) was announced, paving the way for Cambridge to host KRIBB’s first European outpost, demonstrating the strength of UK engineering biology and life sciences. This collaboration brings together experts in cell and gene therapy, organoid screening and AI-enabled drug discovery, with joint projects eligible for funding from both countries.
✴️ KAIST, The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (한국과학기술원)
On March 27, 2024, a team of researchers from the KAIST Department of Chemistry, led by Professor Woo Youn Kim, proposed an interaction-aware 3D molecular generative framework that enables interaction-guided drug design inside target binding pockets (3D molecular generative framework for interaction-guided drug design), to address current challenges with generative models in generalization due to limited data that lead to less innovative designs with often unfavorable interactions for unseen target proteins. In particular, by leveraging universal patterns of protein-ligand interactions as prior knowledge, the new model proposed can achieve high generalizability with limited experimental data. Its performance has been comprehensively assessed by analyzing generated ligands for unseen targets in terms of binding pose stability, affinity, geometric patterns, diversity and novelty. Moreover, the effective design of potential mutant-selective inhibitors demonstrates the applicability of this approach to structure-based drug design.
NetTargets, Inc (Series A $5.3M) is a spinout company based on over-20-year accumulated expertise from KAIST, one of the top research institutes in South Korea. NetTargets was launched in August 2019 on the basis of deep knowledge and experience in systems biology and AI. In March 2023, NetTargets and Samsung Medical Center partnered 🍻 for a new drug research collaboration using NetTargets’ N-MAP (mechanism analysis platform) and N-CAP (Compound Analysis Platform) AI enhanced platforms.
✴️ Institute for Artificial Intelligence & Biomedical Research (AIBI) at Yosei University (연세대학교)
The Institute for Artificial Intelligence & Biomedical Research (AIBI) was initiated in 2021 at Yonsei University, Republic of Korea, with the goal to build an integrated research platform namely “The Target Factory” to develop well-validated packages of targets and leads that can be used in biotech and pharmaceutical industry. They have a collaboration with Daewoong Pharma for PARS1 inhibitors (PARS1 is an enzyme that conjugates amino acid proline to its tRNA to generate prolyl-tRNA to be used in protein synthesis). And a second collaboration with Gangnam severance hospital for MARS1 and CDK4 (MARS1 specifically stabilizes CDK4 by enhancing the formation of the complex between CDK4 and a chaperone protein).
✴️ Pharos iBio Co Ltd, 파로스아이바이오
Pharos iBio (South Korea, 2016) is a drug development company that develops treatments for rare and refractory diseases using a new drug development platform based on big data and AI technology, the Chemiverse Platform. Currently, PHI-101 is in phase I for two clinical trials for Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (relapsed or refractory acute myelogenous leukemia) and Ovarian Cancer (platinum-resistance/refractory ovarian, fallopian tubal and primary peritoneal cancer). PHI-1 is the first oral Chk2 selective inhibitor identified by the Chemiverse platform.
In May 2023, the University of Sydney, Australia signed a MoU with Pharos Therapeutics, the Australian subsidiary of Pharos iBio, to gain entry to Pharos iBio's platform Chemiverse. In February 2024, Pharos iBio announced a collaboration with the team of Professor Shin Sang-joon of the Department of Medical Oncology at Yonsei Cancer Center to conduct the translational study of PHI-501 (a pan-RAF/DDRs inhibitor) for treating solid tumors. PHI-501 has been undergoing toxicology testing at Charles River Laboratories since last year. And after completing preclinical studies, the company plans to file a phase 1 IND in the latter half of this year. In May 2024, Pharos iBio said it has signed a MoU with MEDiC Life Sciences, a Silicon Valley-based company that has established a gene-scissor technology (CRISPR) based cancer target and biomarker discovery platform. Through this agreement, the two companies will utilize Pharos iBio's Chemiverse and MEDiC's CRISPR-based cancer gene discovery platform MCATTM during drug discovery. And in May 2024, the Cha Vaccine Institute in South Korea and Pharos iBio partnered to discover next-generation immunotherapies using AI.
Pharos iBio (KOSDAQ: 388870) has raised a total funding of $35.41M.
✴️ OncoCross Co Ltd, 온코크로스
Oncocross in South Korea utilizes AI to analyze gene expression patterns (transcriptomics, biopsies and blood samples), allowing researchers to develop biomarkers, repurpose drugs and find novel drugs. The company is repurposing drugs by mining diseases against given drugs and mining drugs against diseases to treat rare, intractable diseases and diseases without treatments. By using their technology (RAPTOR AI: a transcriptome-based disease and drug screening platform, ONCO-RAPTOR AI: a transcriptome-based model to predict cancer indications and companion diagnostic biomarkers for anti-cancer drugs and ONCOfind AI: a model to predict primary tumor site for Carcinoma of Unknown Primary), they have identified OC-501 and OC-504, both marketed drugs, as a possible drug combination for Sarcopenia.
In March 2013, they announced the completion of the phase 1 global clinical trial of OC514—a drug-drug combination containing 2 active pharmaceutical ingredients for cancer cachexia—a treatment targeting sarcopenia and other rare muscular diseases. Also OC201+OC202e for inhibition of cancer metastasis is currently in clinical trials. On March 22 2021, Oncocross signed a MoU with Daewoong Pharmaceutical that aims to expand the indications of Enavogliflozin—a drug originally targeting diabetes, repurposed to metabolic, heart and kidney disease—and DWN12088—potential as an anticancer drug—developing it as a polygenic risk score (PRS) treatment for intractable fibrosis in the lung 🫁, kidney and skin.
Oncocross is collaborating also with Boryung (formerly Boryung Pharmaceutical) (KRX: 003850), JW Pharma (KRX: 001060), France based 4P-Pharma and AlphaMol in Switzerland, and has raised a total of $30.52M.
✴️ Standigm Inc, 스탠다임
Standigm (Seoul South Korea, 2015) is pursuing full-stack, AI-driven industrializing drug discovery and has achieved the automation of molecular design workflow through DarkMolFactory. The automation effort has been expanding to the whole drug discovery process on the basis of Standigm AI platforms, including Standigm ASK for target discovery, Standigm BEST for lead design and Standigm Insight for drug repurposing.
The Structure-based drug discovery (SBDD) approach complemented by the use of AI technology was the primary focus of a partnership between the Korean biopharmaceutical company CrystalGenomics (CG Invites Co Ltd, KOSDAQ: 083790) and Standigm, aiming at discovering and developing novel drugs to treat cancer and liver related diseases. Standigm is also working on an anticancer drug candidate targeting T cells with Hanmi Pharmaceutical (Hanmi Pharm Co Ltd, KRX: 128940), to identify pre-clinical substances with its AI platform technology. In August 2023, Standigm announced that it is collaborating with Nashville Biosciences, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in the US, on early drug discovery research. In April 2024, Standigm was featured in Forbes Korea's "2024 Korea AI 50" that highlights AI companies leading the industry.
With offices in the UK and US Standigm has raised a total of $78.25M.
✴️ Syntekabio Inc, (주)신테카바이오
Syntekabio (KOSDAQ: 226330) is a global partner for repurposing drugs, using DeepMatcher, an AI drug development platform that combines new drug development technology and big data technology (such as biomarkers for individual cancer drug screening and disease susceptibility by immunotyping, pharmacogenomic typing, and predicting multi-omics information-based drug adverse effects, etc).
On July 31, 2023, Syntekabio signed a MoU with Metaclipse Therapeutics, a USA based biotechnology company developing immunotherapies for cancer and vaccines for infectious disease, for joint research on development of a personalized immunotherapy for cancer. On August 31, 2023, Syntekabio announced that it has signed another MoU this time with POLARISqb, a drug discovery company that utilizes the optimization power of quantum computing, in order to combine the companies’ vanguard drug research platforms. And in June 2023, Syntekabio expanded in the US by partnering up with a US clinical research organization (Target Health) to enter the world’s largest market for drug development.
✴️ PharmCADD,팜캐드
PharmCADD (Busan, Pusan-jikhalsi, South Korea 2019) is a company with an AI and Quantum Physics-based drug discovery platform: Pharmulator and PharmVAC. Pharmulator is the consolidated drug discovery platform consisting of five core modules: Protein/RNA 3D Structure Prediction, Drug Generation, Virtual Screening, Quantum Calculation and Toxicity Prediction to generate candidates with higher potential. PharmVAC is the vaccine development platform, an integration of AI assisted RNA structure modeling and Drug Delivery Systems. It provides optimal solutions to the users and clients to design, analyze and visualize more probable RNA sequences for any vaccine candidates. PharmCADD has raised a total funding of $22M over 1 round from 10 investors.
✴️ Galux Inc, 갤럭스
Galux was established in 2020 with the incorporation of molecular design technology that has been developed over a period of 15 years at Seoul National University and leverages AI, physics and chemistry. Galux (Series A $4.2M) is currently developing 👨💻🚧 a drug design platform (the protein structure modeling platform "GALAXY") for
protein structure prediction:
GaluxFold, GaluxTBM, GaluxDBM: Protein monomer structure prediction
GaluxRefine: High resolution structure refinement
GalaxyLoop: Protein loop modeling
GalaxyDomDock: Domain orientation prediction
protein-protein/peptide interaction prediction:
GalaxyHomomer, GalaxyHetermoer, GalaxyTongDock: Oligomer complex structure prediciton,
GalaxyRefineComplex: Oligomer structure refinement,
GalaxyPepDock: Protein-peptide complex structure prediction and
GaluxPepMimic: Peptidomimetic compound design,
protein-ligand interaction prediction:
GalaxyDock: protein-small molecule complex structure prediction
GaluxVS: High-throughput virtual screening
GalaxySagittarius: Drug repositioning.
Galaxy7TM: Ligand docking to G protein-coupled receptors
GalaxyWater: Water interaction prediction and
GalaxySite: Protein binding site prediction.
The company is also focused on identifying and developing novel therapeutics for incurable and rare diseases through its AI-based drug design platform and in vitro/in vivo validation. And at Galux they just published: Discovery of Highly Active Kynureninases for Cancer Immunotherapy through Protein Language Model.
✴️ inCerebro Co Ltd, 인세리브로
inCerebro in Seoul, Korea is a pharmaceutical research and development company combining AI with physics-based methods. The company's proprietary MIND platform (MIND-A, MIND-B, MIND-S and MIND-Q) is specifically designed to identify novel small molecule therapeutics for difficult targets like GPCRs and previously intractable protein targets, by combining key technologies such as QM/MM docking, water pharmacophore, automatic globular/membrane MD, AI-driven BAR free energy and Qcharge-VM2 free energy.
The company was founded in 2019 and among its business’ partners you can find Merck, SAJIM, Insilico Medicine, Xtalpi, QIONG, Chemical Computing Group, KD KyungDong Pharm and Quandela. In 2022, SK Chemicals—a unit of South Korea's third-largest conglomerate SK Group—announced a collaboration with inCerebro, to adopt AI and molecular modeling technology to develop drugs with fewer side effects. In 2023, InCerebro recruited CBO Kang Sang-hwan from LG Chem and SK Chemicals. In 2023, Samjin Pharmaceutical and InCerebro joined forces to develop new drugs using AI. In 2024, Inceribro’s CEO Cho Eun-seong stated in an interview “We are accelerating our business expansion based on the creation of synergy between experts in platform development and drug design and a global expert network. And we plan to actively develop not only L/O but also our own consulting business and platform business.” inCerebro has raised $4.38M over 3 rounds.
In South Korea you can also find:
✴️ AIGEN Sciences Inc, (주)아이젠사이언스
AIGEN Sciences is an award-winning AI drug discovery platform that enables the direct discovery of high potency drugs that induce desired cellular-level activity with minimal off-target effects and toxicity (Discovery, MoA and De Novo Design & Optimization). Currently they have four candidates in preclinical phase (oncology) and two more candidates (immune system, oncology) in partnership with Lmito Therapeutics (a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing novel therapies for autoinflammatory/autoimmune disorders and fibrotic diseases, headquartered in Yongin-si, South Korea) and Incurix (a developer of anticancer drugs, in South Korea, designed for targeting tumor transcription factors).
✴️ Deargen Inc, 디어젠
Deargen has Dr. UG (DearTRANS & WX for drug discovery, DearDTI & MolEQ for Drug Design) an AI platform for developing new drugs that is based on DEARGEN’s deep learning technology. It specializes in genome data analysis, biomarker prediction, molecule selection and optimization. Deargen (Series B $16.6M) has collaborations with Serengen GmbH (bringing together Serengen’s novel DNA encoded library, DEL, technology with Deargen’s leading AI-driven drug discovery platform, known as DearDTI), JW pharmaceutical (on DEARGEN iDears) and NeogenTC (on developing an AI platform for cancer immunotherapy).
✴️ Bionsight Inc, 바이온사이트(주)
Bionsight (Series A $ 5.5M) is a drug discovery company offering a chemoproteomics platform named Javelin, capable of identifying thousands of proteins, thereby enabling comprehensive protein-ligand interaction mapping on a proteome-wide scale. It empowers scientists to uncover multiple interactions, provides broad scope applicability to diverse targets, opens the potential to delve into the mechanisms of action and side effects, and presents a cutting-edge strategy to address previously "undruggable" targets.
✴️ AIGENDRUG Co Ltd, 아이겐드럭
AIGENDRUG offers a new AI drug development platform, DrugVLAB, that efficiently discovers optimal new drug candidates, minimizing new drug development costs and the risk of failure in the preclinical and clinical stages. So far during 2024, Aigendrug partnered with Milner Therapeutics Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, England laying the foundation for entry into the global market, signed an agreement with BBImmune Therapeutics for joint research and technical cooperation related to the development of new drugs based on AI and signed an agreement with Prometheus AGI LLC in the US to commercialize AI-based compound screening services.
✴️ 3BIGS Co Ltd, 3빅스
3BIGS is specializing in bio big data-based health management solutions and is offering 3X-TMiner a literature text-mining platform (text mining more than 30 million scientific literature to link genes, diseases, drugs, and clinical trial information), 3X-KBank a bio BigData integration platform (collecting, refining, and integrating a variety of biodata, including genes, drugs and diseases to present new Insight) and X-MOmics a multi-omics analysis platform that analyzes a variety of NGS-based biodata to discover multi omics links and new biomarkers. In 2023, 3BIGS signed a MoU with Bangalore Gastro Center (BGC), a hospital specializing in digestive diseases in India, to research and treat digestive diseases based on the gut microbiome.
Until next time 🏵️❇️,