Daewoong Pharmaceutical said Monday it has signed a partnership agreement with AI-based new drug developer, Oncocross.

Daewoong aims to expand the indications of its new drugs, Enavogliflozin and DWN12088, under development by grafting them to Oncocross’s gene expression pattern-based AI platform, RAPTOR AI. 

The drugmaker plans to expand the indications of Enavogliflozin, under development as a diabetes therapy, to treat other symptoms, such as obesity, heart disease, and kidney diseases, it said.

Daewoong will also search for the possibility of an anticancer drug from DWN12088, a polygenic risk score (PRS) target treatment for intractable fibrosis occurring in the lungs, kidney and skin. 

Using Oncocross’s AI platform, Daewoong expects to reduce the drug development process sharply, as it can find the optimal treatment combination. 

“The grafting of new drug development with AI platform has emerged as a new trend,” Daewoong CEO Jeon Seng-ho said. “We expect to establish a successful pipeline model through an open collaboration of our new drug developing capability and Oncocross’s bioinformatics-based AI platform.”

Oncocross CEO Kim Yi-rang also said, “We will try to make sure that our AI technology and Daewoong’s new drug development skills change the existing paradigm of drug development. We will expand the cooperative relationship with other pharmaceutical companies, too.”