JW Pharmaceutical has been selected for a project under the Ministry of Health and Welfare's artificial intelligence (AI) drug development initiative. The company aims to accelerate the discovery of anticancer drug candidates by integrating AI with robotic synthesis automation technology.
On June 17, JW Pharmaceutical announced that it has been designated as the leading research and development institution for the "Structure-Based AI Drug Development Support" project, part of the 2026 first phase of the health and medical technology research and development program overseen by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
This initiative aims to enhance a low-molecular-weight drug development platform and discover new drug candidates by utilizing structure-based drug discovery techniques, generative AI, and AI agents. Structure-based drug discovery involves analyzing the three-dimensional structure of target proteins related to diseases and the binding sites of drugs to identify and optimize effective compounds. The project targets companies with AI platforms for discovering low-molecular-weight chemical synthesis drug candidates.
JW Pharmaceutical, in collaboration with the research institution C&C Drug Research Institute, will conduct research on anticancer drug candidate discovery over the next three years with a total of 2.2 billion won in government support.
The core of this project is to enhance JW Pharmaceutical's AI drug development platform, "JWave," by integrating it with a robotic synthesis automation system to create an autonomous research platform.
JWave is a platform built by integrating existing big data-based drug discovery systems, "Jewelry" and "Clover." It is designed to improve the efficiency of discovering new drug candidates by applying various AI models based on genomic information from cell lines, organoids, and disease animal models, as well as proprietary synthetic compound data.
JW Pharmaceutical plans to increase research efficiency and precision by establishing a system where robots automatically synthesize and produce compounds proposed by AI through synthesis automation equipment. C&C Drug Research Institute will be responsible for verifying the efficacy and drug properties of the derived compounds to facilitate the transition to non-clinical stages for candidate discovery.
A representative from JW Pharmaceutical stated, "This recognition of our research strategy that links the AI platform with synthesis automation technology will enable us to accelerate the discovery of innovative drug candidates through the enhancement of our autonomous research platform."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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