Central Insight to Pursue KOSDAQ Listing for Bio Subsidiary

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] Central Insight, which is actively advancing its artificial intelligence (AI) platform new drug development business, announced on the 22nd that it will accelerate the KOSDAQ listing of its subsidiary, Ajos Bio.

Ajos Bio, a company specializing in AI platform new drug development, has begun preparations for listing, including selecting a lead manager, aiming for a KOSDAQ listing in early next year.

Ajos Bio has secured five immune oncology drug pipelines and two immune system disease drug pipelines, including for COVID-19. Currently, it is conducting clinical trials for a peptide-based drug delivery system (DDS) for COVID-19 treatment, as well as for autoimmune therapies and immune oncology drugs. Recently, clinical results have become visible, and the company plans to complete procedures such as reporting clinical results and filing patents in the first half of the year.

As the largest shareholder of Ajos Bio, Central Insight plans to actively support its subsidiary’s clinical progress and KOSDAQ listing. Furthermore, with AI new drug development platform companies being highly valued in the global market recently, the company expects the future equity value of Ajos Bio to increase following its listing.

This is because the pharmaceutical industry worldwide is increasingly utilizing AI comprehensively, drawing attention to the corporate value of AI new drug platform companies. Atomwise, a new drug development company based in San Francisco, USA, raised $45 million (approximately 54 billion KRW) in Series A funding alone. Additionally, Schrodinger, which was listed on the NASDAQ last year, has been called the "second Tesla" and surpassed a market capitalization of 7 trillion KRW.

A company official explained, “Although still unfamiliar in Korea, the NRDO (No Research Development Only) business model, which specializes in discovering new drug candidates with high global pharmaceutical market demand to maximize technology transfer potential, is becoming an innovative business model in the bio industry worldwide. Since AI identifies only a small number of suitable substances among tens of billions of compounds, it can find new drug candidates more efficiently, drastically reducing the cost and time required for new drug development.”

He added, “Ajos Bio is reviewing multiple listing tracks such as growth-specialized listing and technology-specialized listing due to its outstanding technology, clinical results, and remarkable growth. We expect that Ajos Bio’s IPO will be recognized for its differentiated AI platform and new drug development technology.”