Daewoong Pharma, UK firm to jointly develop autoimmune disease drug

South Korean drugmaker Daewoong Pharmaceutical Co. said on Tuesday that it has signed a cooperation agreement with Sygnature Discovery, a British new drug developer, to discover new candidate substances for autoimmune disease treatments.

Under the agreement, Daewoong Pharmaceutical will use Sygnature's new drug discovery technology to discover new candidate substances for autoimmune disease treatments and strengthen its capabilities in protein-protein interaction (PPI) new drug development. The agreement also includes support for efficacy and mechanism validation and development acceleration.

Sygnature is a new drug development partner that supports early-stage drug development and research, founded in 2004.

Park Joon-seok, head of Daewoong Pharmaceutical's New Drug Development Center, said, "Daewoong Pharmaceutical is actively promoting open collaboration for more effective global new drug development through innovative platform technologies," and expressed expectations that "this cooperation will provide a new milestone in expanding our new drug pipeline."

Write to Jeong-Min Nam at peux@hankyung.com