Daewoong Pharmaceutical takes drug development to the next level with Merck AI technology support.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical announced on October 31 that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Merck, a German multinational company specializing in science and technology, to build an AI-based drug development platform and provide technical support for the entire drug development cycle.
Through the agreement, the two companies will work together to improve the efficiency and productivity of drug development. Merck will provide data and programs necessary for the drug development process, and Daewoong Pharmaceutical will apply them to the web-based modeling platform it is developing to discover, validate, and monitor new drug candidates.
In particular, Merck will be the first company in the industry to use AI to support the technical skills required in all stages of the drug development cycle.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical will utilize Merck's SYNTHIA™ and Aldrich Market Select (AMS) to improve the efficiency of the drug development process.
SYNTHIA is a new drug development software that suggests synthetic methods and synthetic pathways for candidate substances based on AI technology. It is known for quickly and accurately analyzing and presenting chemical synthesis methods in the early stages of drug development, and deriving accurate solutions through coding by professional chemical researchers, significantly reducing research steps and costs.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical plans to utilize SYNTHIA in the early stages of drug development to improve the efficiency of the research process.
AMS, a platform that supports the synthesis of small molecule libraries, provides reagents and synthetic building blocks to perform chemical synthesis according to the pathways explored by SYNTHIA, helping to secure candidate compounds in a short time.
Daewoong expects AMS to facilitate virtual screening and synthesis of candidate compounds using small molecule data consisting of more than 14 million chemicals, enabling faster and more accurate drug research.
Through this agreement, Daewoong Pharmaceutical plans to further strengthen its competitiveness in the R&D field and grow into a global Big Pharma by accelerating the development of global blockbuster drugs.
"Through this agreement, we will improve the efficiency of new drug research and lay the groundwork to grow into a global Big Pharma by widening the gap between our domestic competitors and our R&D capabilities for new drug development," said Park Jun-seok, head of Daewoong Pharmaceutical's new drug center.
"This business agreement with Daewoong Pharmaceutical is significant because it is the first partnership in Korea to support AI-based drug discovery technology across the entire drug discovery cycle," said Jeong Ji-young, Head of Merck's Science & Lab Solutions.
