"Lunit Aiming for 10 Trillion KRW in Sales in 10 Years... From Diagnostics to Platform and New Drug Development (Comprehensive)"

10th Anniversary Meeting
Covering All Anticancer Biomarkers
From Platform Utilization to New Drug Development
Active M&A Efforts Also Indicated

"I will make Lunit the world’s leading company in conquering cancer. Within 10 years, we will achieve annual sales of 10 trillion KRW and operating profit of 5 trillion KRW. It is hard to imagine now, but I am confident that we can become such a large company." (Beomseok Seo, CEO of Lunit)

Seo Beom-seok, CEO of Lunit, is giving a greeting at a press conference held on the morning of the 24th at Lunit Square in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
[Photo by Lee Chun-hee]

Marking its 10th anniversary, the medical artificial intelligence (AI) company Lunit has presented a mid- to long-term vision aiming for "annual sales of 10 trillion KRW and operating profit of 5 trillion KRW" by its 20th anniversary in 2033. In addition to its existing core business of cancer diagnosis, it outlined plans extending to big data business, comprehensive biomarker development, and even new drug development.

At the 10th anniversary briefing held on the morning of the 24th at Lunit Square in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, CEO Beomseok Seo stated, "Based on AI technology in which domestic companies have particular strengths, we will improve the quality of medical services at healthcare institutions worldwide and increase cancer patient survival rates, thereby realizing the founding spirit and corporate philosophy of 'conquering cancer through AI'."

Lunit plans to go beyond its existing core business of AI solutions for cancer diagnosis and treatment to create a "data-AI virtuous cycle ecosystem" through data. To this end, it presented goals including a medical big data platform, autonomous AI, whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), multi-omics biomarkers, and discovery of new drug candidate substances.

Among these, CEO Seo emphasized, "Until now, Lunit has been a company that creates AI applications (apps). While we will continue this, developing an AI platform will be our future direction," identifying the development of an AI big data platform as the top priority.

In the big data platform field, Lunit plans to promote integrated management of medical big data to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment prediction accuracy based on AI. To this end, data will be collected from screening centers, regional base hospitals, clinical trial institutions, and cancer centers worldwide, followed by precise analysis through AI learning models. Subsequently, an integrated AI platform that is directly installed and managed within medical institution systems will be developed.

Regarding concerns about data ownership and storage during this process, CEO Seo proposed a solution: "Data resides at each hospital, and we only have connection permissions. AI learning occurs at each hospital, and an integrated approach based on federated learning to collect this data comprehensively is inevitable."

In terms of AI technology advancement, Lunit will embark on developing autonomous AI that makes judgments independently without physician intervention. However, there are criticisms that standalone AI diagnosis is premature due to various regulations and accuracy issues.

In response, CEO Seo expressed a determination to confront these challenges head-on. He said, "Although controversial, accuracy will resolve everything," emphasizing, "Cost is an unavoidable issue." Regarding responsibility for diagnostic errors, he stated, "People ask who will take responsibility, and we will." He suggested a liability insurance model as a solution, explaining, "If AI performance is nearly perfect with almost no missed cases, a model charging a small insurance premium and compensating for very rare errors is possible." He also noted that autonomous AI for diabetic retinopathy diagnosis, 'IDx-DR,' has already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and in 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended AI use as an alternative to X-ray reading for tuberculosis screening and diagnosis.

Additionally, Lunit is developing whole-body MRI-related technology with the intention of screening all cancers in the body through a single imaging session. Although whole-body MRI reading is currently used, it is evaluated as having low accuracy and limited practicality. However, Lunit plans to create a next-generation solution with higher detection rates, lower false-positive rates compared to existing imaging diagnostics, and no radiation exposure risk.

CEO Seo explained, "Since the types of cancers currently screened are limited, I thought the highest value would be to cover all cancer types with a single test." While liquid biopsy exists, he emphasized, "Only companies targeting individual cancer types have relatively high accuracy," adding, "Covering all cancers with one image is inevitably cost-effective."

Lunit's Cancer Treatment Business Development Model
Photo by Lunit

Lunit plans to expand the use of its existing flagship product, 'Lunit Scope,' to include antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), currently the most notable anticancer modality. Ultimately, the goal is to develop biomarkers for all anticancer drugs. Recently, at an academic conference, results were announced showing that using Lunit Scope to check patient biomarker levels significantly improved ADC treatment efficacy.

In the biomarker field, Lunit is also pursuing development applying a multi-omics approach. Multi-omics refers to various analyses and approaches for disease research, including genomics and microbiology. By integrating pathology and medical imaging learning, this approach aims to enable higher prediction accuracy of anticancer drug treatment effects, contributing to optimal drug selection.

Furthermore, Lunit aims to transform into a new drug candidate development company. CEO Seo emphasized, "To increase cancer survival rates, drugs are necessary, so this is an unavoidable future for Lunit’s mission." If positive results are derived by applying Lunit Scope to promising candidate substances, Lunit plans to license in the technology, then develop it directly for internal commercialization or license out the technology to other large pharmaceutical companies.

He also revealed that there was much consideration regarding in-house new drug discovery. CEO Seo said, "Since pharmaceutical companies need our biomarkers quite a lot, I have long thought we could go in the opposite direction," adding, "I have often thought we might do it ourselves." Regarding this, he mentioned that acquiring a suitable company is one option but stated, "However, I do not think new drug discovery is something we must do immediately," emphasizing, "First, forming the platform well is the priority."

In this way, Lunit actively proposed an 'inorganic' approach to secure new growth engines through partnerships and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Rather than doing everything alone, Lunit seeks various partnerships and, if necessary, will pursue M&A. If such growth engines are well established, the company also presented the target of annual sales of 10 trillion KRW and operating profit of 5 trillion KRW by 2033, 10 years from now. The currently deficit financial statements are expected to turn profitable by 2025.

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