Daewoong tapped to help build Korea’s AI engine for preclinical and clinical drug models

Korea is putting Daewoong Pharmaceutical at the center of a new push to embed AI into drug development, naming the company a key data and validation partner on a national K-AI program.

Daewoong said Monday it has been selected as a co-research institution for what the Ministry of Health and Welfare describes as its 2025 K-AI “preclinical and clinical model development project for new drug development,” a government-backed effort to build an AI-based framework that links early-stage studies with clinical trials.

The project is led by Samsung Medical Center (SMC) and runs as a multi-center consortium that includes Kangbuk Samsung Hospital and Daewoong. 

The group is tasked with developing AI software for “reverse translational research design,” an approach that starts with clinical data and feeds those insights back into how animal and other preclinical studies are designed.

The goal is to cut down on trial and error between promising lab results and disappointing human data and to improve the odds that a drug candidate will eventually work in the clinic.

Over the next four years, Daewoong plans to supply nonclinical datasets from its cancer and metabolic disease programs to help train and refine the AI models. 

The company will also serve as a test site, running the software on new data generated at its in-house new drug research center to see whether the tools can improve how it designs animal models, chooses targets and decides which candidates to move into human trials.

Daewoong says the work should help it build capabilities to predict clinical outcomes more reliably from preclinical readouts and to tailor AI models to the needs of its own pipeline. 

Over time, the company aims to expand AI models and data initially developed for oncology and metabolic diseases into a broader clinical AI platform that can be applied to other conditions and speed the growth of its drug portfolio.