Daewoong Pharmaceutical Enhances New Drug Development Capabilities with Merck AI Technology

Daewoong Pharmaceutical announced on the 31st that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Merck Life Science to establish an "AI-based new drug development platform and provide full-cycle technical support for new drug development."

Daewoong Pharmaceutical has signed a business agreement with Merck Life Science to establish an artificial intelligence (AI)-based new drug development platform and provide full-cycle technical support for new drug development. Park Jun-seok, Head of the New Drug Center at Daewoong Pharmaceutical (left), and Jung Ji-young, CEO of Merck Life Science Science and Lab Solutions, are taking a commemorative photo after signing the business agreement.
[Photo by Daewoong Pharmaceutical]

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The signing ceremony, held the previous day at Merck Korea headquarters in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, was attended by Park Jun-seok, Head of Daewoong Pharmaceutical's New Drug Center, and Jung Ji-young, Head of Merck Life Science Science and Lab Solution Business, among others.

Through this agreement, both companies will collaborate to improve the efficiency and productivity of new drug development. Merck will provide the data and programs necessary for the new drug development process, and Daewoong Pharmaceutical plans to apply these to its self-developed web-based modeling platform for discovering, validating, and monitoring new drug candidates.

In this business agreement, Merck will be the first in the industry to support the technical capabilities required throughout all cycles of new drug development using AI. Daewoong Pharmaceutical expects to enhance the efficiency of the new drug development process by utilizing Merck's "SynCia" and "AMS (Aldrich Market Select)."

SynCia is a new drug development software based on AI technology that suggests synthesis methods and synthetic routes for candidate substances. It analyzes and proposes chemical synthesis methods in the early stages of new drug development, known for deriving accurate solutions that reduce research phases and costs.

AMS, a platform supporting low-molecular library synthesis, provides reagents and synthetic building blocks to perform chemical synthesis according to the routes explored by SynCia, helping secure candidate compounds in a short time. Daewoong Pharmaceutical anticipates that AMS, which utilizes low-molecular data composed of over 14 million chemical substances, will enable smooth virtual screening and candidate compound synthesis, making new drug research faster and more accurate.

Through this agreement, Daewoong Pharmaceutical plans to strengthen its competitiveness in research and development (R&D) and accelerate new drug development to grow into a global big pharma.

Park Jun-seok, Head of Daewoong Pharmaceutical's New Drug Center, said, "Daewoong Pharmaceutical actively utilizes AI technology to improve the productivity of new drug development, which requires enormous time and cost, and is also actively building partnerships with companies possessing innovative technologies. Through this MOU, we will enhance the efficiency of new drug research and widen the gap in new drug development R&D capabilities from domestic competitors, laying the foundation to grow into a global big pharma."

Jung Ji-young, Head of Merck Life Science Science and Lab Solution Business, said, "The MOU with Daewoong Pharmaceutical is significant as it is the first domestic partnership to support AI-based new drug development technology across the entire cycle. We hope to contribute to the new drug development of domestic pharmaceutical companies like Daewoong Pharmaceutical through Merck's sophisticated AI-based new drug development technologies such as SynCia and AMS."

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