JW Pharmaceutical said on the 17th it was selected as the lead research and development institution for the Ministry of Health and Welfare's "structure-based AI new drug development support project."
Launched this year, the project aims to advance a small-molecule new drug development platform and discover new drug candidates by using structure-based drug discovery technology, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and AI agents. Structure-based drug discovery is a research approach that identifies and optimizes active compounds by analyzing the three-dimensional structure of disease-related target proteins and their binding sites.
JW Pharmaceutical, together with C&C New Drug Research Institute as a joint research and development institution, plans to conduct research to discover anticancer new drug candidates with a total of 2.2 billion won in government support over the next three years.
The core of this project is to advance a self-driving lab by linking JW Pharmaceutical's AI new drug development integrated platform "JWave" with a robot-based synthesis automation system.
JWave is built on bio-chemical big data, including genomic information from more than 500 cell lines, organoids, and disease animal models, and data on over 40,000 in-house synthesized compounds. More than 20 AI models, including structure-based modeling and Reinforcement Learning algorithms, are applied to improve efficiency across the entire drug development process, from active compound (hit) discovery to lead compound optimization.
Through JWave, JW Pharmaceutical analyzes target protein structures and drug binding sites, then designs compounds considering efficacy, selectivity, and drug-like properties. The company plans to conduct research by automatically synthesizing and producing AI-proposed compounds using robot-based synthesis automation equipment.
The synthesis automation system automates repetitive compound synthesis processes to increase research speed and experimental accuracy. The company plans to streamline the research cycle from design to synthesis to evaluation and shorten the timelines for hit discovery and lead optimization.
C&C New Drug Research Institute is responsible for verifying the efficacy and drug-like properties of compounds derived from the self-driving lab and for discovering anticancer new drug candidates that can enter the nonclinical stage.
A JW Pharmaceutical official said, "The selection of this project recognizes the competitiveness of our in-house AI platform, bio-chemical data, and synthesis automation technology," adding, "We will work with C&C New Drug Research Institute to advance the self-driving lab and accelerate the discovery of innovative anticancer new drug candidates."