SK C&C Finds Answers to Disease Causes in AI Drug Development

Gachon University Gil Medical Center and Development of 'AI Target Discovery Service'

[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] SK Inc. C&C announced on the 25th that it is developing an 'AI Target Discovery Service' that helps artificial intelligence (AI) discover targets (factors causing diseases) for new drug development of metabolic diseases in collaboration with Gachon University Gil Medical Center. New drug development goes through stages such as target discovery, candidate substance derivation, preclinical and clinical trials, and drug approval. Innovative target discovery is essential to develop innovative new drugs with global competitiveness.

The service being developed this time is the first step in new drug development, discovering and verifying targets such as genes and proteins that cause diseases using AI. It identifies genes or proteins causing diseases with AI, verifies their roles, and discovers new drug candidates targeting them. The AI Target Discovery Service is developed in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS) with participation from medical and pharmaceutical experts specializing in specific diseases. SK C&C and Gil Medical Center plan to first develop target candidate discovery and verification services for metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, fatty liver, and dyslipidemia, which are of high interest in global new drug research.

To select innovative new drug candidate genes for metabolic diseases, the service determines the druggability of new targets based on Gil Medical Center’s research expertise and provides prioritization of potential targets. Target prioritization is predicted and verified using seven criteria: genetically modified mouse and human phenotype analysis results, genomic research results, text mining, side effects, and others. Professor Chul-soo Choi of the Department of Endocrinology at Gil Medical Center said, "The development of this service will be an outstanding achievement that expands the scope of medical AI utilization worldwide." Dong-jun Yoon, head of SK C&C Healthcare Group, said, "With the development of this AI Target Discovery Service, it has become possible to provide AI services covering the core processes of new drug development," adding, "We will accelerate development aiming to open the service in the second half of this year."

Meanwhile, SK C&C previously developed a 'Drug Design Platform' applying AI to the new drug candidate substance exploration stage in collaboration with SK Biopharm in 2018.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.