AI-powered Drug Discovery – Daewoong Pharmaceutical Takes the Lead

Daewoong Pharmaceutical has taken a significant leap forward in the field of AI-powered drug discovery with the introduction of its advanced system, leveraging a colossal database of 800 million compounds. The Seoul-based pharmaceutical giant has developed this system, named DAVID (Daewoong Advanced Virtual Database), as the cornerstone of its innovative approach to addressing longstanding challenges in drug development, such as high costs and inefficiencies.

Over the last two years, Daewoong’s researchers have meticulously preprocessed a vast collection of compounds—both newly discovered and those accumulated from four decades of drug research—to filter out data unsuitable for AI applications. This has resulted in DAVID, a database that not only serves as a foundation for their drug discovery endeavors but also boasts an estimated one billion potential drug candidates.

Building on DAVID, Daewoong introduced AIVS (AI-based Virtual Screening), a generative AI tool designed to identify active substances for specific target proteins. AIVS enhances the drug discovery process with its ability to perform searches based on 3D modeling, thereby expediting the discovery of patentable active substances.

The culmination of these technologies is Daisy (Daewoong AI System), a web-based platform that enables the rapid identification and prediction of new compounds’ properties, along with facilitating ADMET (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity) research. Daisy’s implementation has already yielded notable achievements, including the discovery of an active substance for weight loss and diabetes treatment, and a promising candidate for cancer cell inhibition—all within significantly reduced time frames.

Daewoong’s AI-driven approach not only signifies a paradigm shift in the development of novel drugs but also positions the company to compete on a global scale with major pharmaceutical firms. This initiative aligns with broader industry trends, as evidenced by similar AI drug discovery partnerships among other pharma giants like Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer.

With DAVID, named after the biblical figure who overcame Goliath, Daewoong underscores its ambition to challenge and surpass the capabilities of global pharmaceutical leaders through AI. This technology holds the promise of dramatically shortening the traditionally lengthy and costly drug development cycle, a prospect that has been validated by recent studies indicating potential halvations in time and significant cost reductions.

Small businesses can now harness the power of Data Cloud and generative AI within their workflow, enabling faster audience segmentation, automated campaign creation, personalized customer engagements, and real-time campaign performance optimization.

Park Jun-Seok, director of the New Drug Discovery Center at Daewoong, encapsulated the company’s vision by likening the realm of new drug candidates to the universe, with AI ushering in a new era of exploration that could revolutionize drug development and make substantial contributions to human health.