Daewoong Pharmaceutical has struck a research agreement with Sweden’s Salipro Biotech to tap its membrane protein stabilization platform, aiming to accelerate discovery of new drug candidates across undisclosed targets.

Announced Tuesday, the deal marks Salipro’s first partnership in Korea and hands Daewoong rights to use the Salipro Platform, a proprietary scaffold technology that keeps notoriously unstable membrane proteins intact for drug screening. 

Research suggests that these proteins, embedded in the cell membrane, are involved in more than half of all drug targets and are notoriously difficult to study outside their native environment.

Daewoong declined to say which therapeutic areas or specific proteins it plans to pursue. Financial terms, including research payments or downstream milestones, were also not disclosed. 

Still, Daewoong Pharmaceutical CEO Park Seong-soo said in Tuesday's release that the tech will “increase accessibility to challenging membrane protein targets” and speed up Daewoong’s in-house discovery pipeline, with the long-term goal of delivering “globally competitive new drugs.”

The tie-up adds Daewoong to a short list of pharma partners betting on Salipro’s platform. In March, Boehringer Ingelheim signed a deal to apply the technology to neuro and cardio-renal-metabolic programs, focusing on hard-to-hit membrane targets. Sanofi and Sumitomo have also inked collaborations -- Sanofi to boost biologics workflows against tough targets, and Sumitomo to better characterize the mechanism of action for a selected compound.

“This partnership is highly meaningful as it marks Salipro’s first alliance with a Korean company,” said Jens Frauenfeld, CEO of Salipro Biotech. He added that the platform unlocks access to “previously inaccessible target proteins,” a long-standing hurdle for developers working to advance first-in-class drugs.