Korea’s Voronoi in talks with global firms on drug designs

South Korea’s biotechnology startup Voronoi Inc. is in talks with global biomedical companies on drug designs as it aims to expand the business and significantly improve earnings, its chief executive said.

Voronoi, founded in 2015, is a company specialized in drug designs that develops novel kinase inhibitors and target protein degraders with the aim to treat intractable and rare diseases. Kinase plays an important role in the human body, but when the mutation occurs, it can cause diseases such as cancers. Kinase inhibitors hinder kinases that can be the cause of diseases.

Voronoi CEO Kim Dae-kwon said its own data algorithms are evolving and more global pharmaceutical makers are proposing cooperation.

“Global drugmakers are asking us to design materials for technology transfers after providing us the ideal target product profiles (TPPs), side effects and disadvantages of medicines that they have been developing,” Kim told The Korea Economic Daily in an interview.

“These works can be good chances because the development periods are as short as one year or one and a half while the clients bear the costs. Even if they fail, we can keep the data.”

Voronoi is set to expand the contract drug design business from this year as it is a more stable business model than the existing technology exports, in which the startup develops materials, finds customers and negotiates prices.

The business is expected to help the company post an operating profit of 77.1 billion won ($63.5 million) with sales of 116.6 billion won in 2024. It reported an operating loss of 7.8 billion won in the first three quarters of 2021 and sales of 10.1 billion won, according to its filing to a local financial regulator.

TECHNOLOGY EXPORTS

Voronoi is developing medicines with artificial intelligence based on a database of the activation degree of some 4,000 compounds, targeting 468 kinases.

It has 11 pipelines currently under development, of which four have been sold as a form of technology exports at the preclinical stage. Its total technology exports stood at 2.1 trillion won. US biotech companies such as ORIC Pharmaceuticals Inc., Brickell Biotech Inc. and Pyramid Biosciences Inc., as well as South Korea’s HK inno.N Corp. were among Voronoi’s customers.

“We design drugs, using non-toxic substances in our database that respond well to desired targets from the early stages of new drug development,” Kim said. “We could secure many pipelines and export technologies in the short term thanks to a new drug development process optimized with AI.”

TO RAISE $107 MILLION THROUGH IPO

Voronoi plans to go public on the tech-heavy Kosdaq later this month to raise up to 130 billion won. It will use the proceeds for research and development.

It will float 2 million shares at a price between 50,000 won and 65,000 won apiece. The initial public offering will likely put its market capitalization at as much as 866.7 billion won.

The company is scheduled to hold a bookbuilding on March 14-15 to set the IPO price, followed by a retail subscription on March 21-22, according to the regulatory filing. Korea Investment & Securities Co. and Mirae Asset Securities manage the listing.

Write to Ye-Jin Jun at ace@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.