JW Pharma to put AI into new drug ingredient development

South Korea's drug developer JW Pharmaceutical is expanding the scope of its artificial intelligence (AI) uses from new drug research to the development of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

JW Pharmaceutical said on Monday that it has signed an agreement with Merck Life Science to research and develop raw materials for new drugs using the latter's AI software "Synthia."

Under the terms of the agreement, Merck will provide JW with Synthia, a program that quickly analyzes the synthesis route of APIs in the new drug development stage, together with consulting on new material synthesis.

JW plans to actively utilize Synthia for research on the synthesis of new drug candidates, which it expects to reduce research time and cost on the method of preparing compounds (main components) to be used in clinical and non-clinical trials.

In addition, JW plans to build an unmanned automated laboratory environment in which robots synthesize APIs 24 hours a day on behalf of human researchers under the guidelines to be proposed by Synthia.

"In order to beef up new drug pipelines discovered through our R&D platform, we are collaborating with companies with innovative AI technology for open innovations,"  said Shin Young-seop, CEO of JW Pharmaceutical.

Write to Jae-Young Han at jyhan@hankyung.com