inno.N disclosed a plan to develop a selective RET inhibitor targeted therapy, which the company acquired from Voronoi, a Korean new drug R&D company.

On Wednesday, inno.N introduced four anticancer drug pipelines at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.

The company said it completed a non-clinical trial of IN-A013, one of the four drug candidates, and would begin a global study this year.

IN-A013 (VRN061782) is a selective RET kinase inhibitor inno.N introduced from Voronoi in February last year.

inno.N said it planned to develop IN-A013 as a targeted anticancer therapy that selectively targets only cancer cells with the same biomarker in the body regardless of the location of cancer, including lung and thyroid cancer with RET gene fusion or mutation.

Lilly’s Retevmo (selpercatinib) and Roche’s Gavreto (pralsetinib) are in the same drug class as IN-A013. inno.N said it would make IN-A013 a best-in-class drug.

The company has yet to establish a plan to conduct global trials of the drug candidate. However, as the company introduced the drug at the JP Morgan Health Conference, where multinational pharmaceutical and biotech companies gathered, it might try to sign a deal to license out the drug, observers said.

An official at inno.N said the company had not made any plan to conduct a global study.

Voronoi is a new drug R&D company established in 2015. The company has an R&D platform, Voronomics, with a kinase profiling database and machine learning.

Voronoi signed a joint research agreement with JW Pharmaceutical in December 2020 to develop a STAT3-targeting new drug.

Voronoi failed to go public on Kosdaq in 2019 and is preparing for IPO again.