The 'Artificial Intelligence' Wave Sweeping the Pharmaceutical Bio Industry... Accelerating the Discovery of New Drug Candidates

SK Chemical Files Patents for 3 New Drug Candidates
Traditional New Drug Development Takes 15 Years
AI Can Reduce Both Time and Costs

SK Chemicals researchers are reviewing the analysis results of a novel combination drug candidate discovered through collaboration with Dr. Noah.
[Photo by SK Chemicals]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-ju] Artificial intelligence (AI) technology, hailed as the flower of the 4th Industrial Revolution, is bringing waves of change to the domestic pharmaceutical and bio industry. With the possibility of accelerating new drug development through AI, pharmaceutical and bio companies are actively collaborating with AI platform companies or utilizing AI to discover actual new drug candidates, thereby securing new growth engines.

According to the industry on the 31st, major domestic pharmaceutical and bio companies are actively engaged in discovering new drug candidates using AI. SK Chemicals recently utilized the AI platform technology 'ARK' from Dr. Noah Biotech and, after 1 year and 2 months of collaboration, derived two combination drug candidates for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and one for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and filed patents.

Since 2019, SK Chemicals has been promoting new drug development by partnering with big data researchers and AI specialists as part of its open innovation strategy. Last year, it filed patents through joint research with Standigm and is conducting multifaceted research with other partners such as Simplex and Deargen. Starting this year, the organization, which was previously operated as a task force (TF), has been formally organized into an Open Innovation Team to accelerate the open innovation strategy.

GC Green Cross recently signed a joint research agreement on AI-based new drug development with the Mokam Life Science Research Institute and the AI Research Institute at Seoul National University. Under this agreement, both parties will cooperate in discovering new drug candidates using AI algorithms and building research platforms related to disease genomics and proteins. GC Green Cross and Mokam Research Institute are participating in the membership program of Seoul National University’s AI Research Institute, and plan to integrate AI platforms into the development of mRNA-based rare disease therapeutics led by Mokam Research Institute.

JW Pharmaceutical signed an agreement in November last year with Syntekabio, an AI new drug development company based on genomic big data, to jointly plan innovative new drug R&D projects targeting specific proteins. Hanmi Pharmaceutical also signed a joint research contract with Standigm last year and has started discovering new drug candidates using AI. Dong Wha Pharm signed a joint research contract with Oncocross, an AI-based new drug development company, and plans to explore new indications and verify development potential by utilizing an AI platform specialized in analyzing anticancer drug substances.

The reason the pharmaceutical and bio industry is focusing on AI is none other than accelerating new drug development. According to a 2020 report by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute titled 'Domestic and International Status and Challenges of New Drug Development Using Artificial Intelligence (AI),' traditional new drug development takes about 15 years on average. Even then, only one out of 5,000 to 10,000 candidates succeeds in becoming a final new drug. Using AI can significantly shorten the period from the initial discovery of new drug candidates. In clinical trial stages, AI helps identify patient groups highly relevant to the disease, design clinical trial protocols, and reduce trial-and-error in personalized drug development. Lee Soo-min, head of the Open Innovation Team at SK Chemicals, analyzed that AI-based new drug development "is estimated to reduce the time and effort required to discover candidates by nearly half compared to traditional research methods."

Collaboration between the pharmaceutical and bio industry and AI companies for new drug development is expected to continue for the time being. Since it can drastically reduce time and costs compared to traditional methods, leading global 'big pharma' companies have already entered AI-based new drug development. In Korea, the 'AI New Drug Development Support Center' was launched in March 2019 through cooperation between the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. The use of AI is likely to become not a 'choice' but a 'necessity' for the survival of the pharmaceutical and bio industry going forward.

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