Lunit said Wednesday that it has agreed with GI Innovation to develop innovative new medicines jointly.

Under the accord, the two companies will use GI Innovation's two dual fusion protein platforms -- GI-SMART and SMAR-Tab -- and Lunit's artificial intelligence-based tissue analysis system, Lunit Scope, to conduct comprehensive research to develop new protein and antibody drugs.

Specifically, they will use Lunit Scope to evaluate the therapeutic prognosis and efficacy of GI Innovation's flagship pipeline, GI-101, and other candidates under development, such as new fusion protein immunotherapies, antibody drugs, and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) treatments.

Lunit and GI Innovation will make the most of their platforms, from discovering new drugs to increasing the probability of success in clinical trials of new medications and selecting suitable partner drugs for combination therapy. The two companies expect that they will dramatically reduce the time and cost required for new drug development and quickly respond to unmet clinical needs.

"The global trend for new drug development is to increase the success rate of clinical trials with combination therapy while reducing cost and time using platforms and AI," GI Innovation Co-CEO Jang Myoung-ho said. "The company expects an explosive synergy in developing innovative new drugs through combining GI Innovation's platform for developing new protein and antibody drugs with Lunit's medical AI."

Lunit CEO Suh Beom-seok also said, "If we use AI to treat patients by developing new drugs, it can create very great value."

Through the GI Innovation's new drug development platform and the Lunit Scope system, the company expects it to predict the prognosis and efficacy of new treatments much more effectively than before, Suh added.