Standigm-MolzenBio Join Forces with AI and Synthetic Biology

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] AI drug development company Standigm and synthetic biology-based drug development company MolGen Bio recently announced on the 26th that they have signed a business agreement for new drug development based on AI and synthetic biology.

Through this agreement, the two companies plan to actively conduct joint research and academic exchanges to discover microbe-derived small molecule drugs by combining Standigm's AI drug development platform with MolGen Bio's synthetic biology research capabilities.

Synthetic biology is a technology that introduces engineering techniques into life sciences to artificially design, manufacture, and synthesize components or systems of living organisms. A representative example is Moderna's use of synthetic biology to shorten the development period during the COVID-19 vaccine development process. In December last year, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced a digital bio innovation strategy, expressing its intention to strengthen domestic and international cooperation in the digital bio field, and particularly to focus on fostering strategic technologies such as AI, big data, and synthetic biology.

MolGen Bio is a company developing microbe-derived small molecule drugs based on synthetic biology, possessing over 3,000 microbial genomes and more than 700 microbial small molecule libraries developed through its proprietary platform technology. Using Standigm's AI technology, MolGen Bio plans to efficiently predict the potential activity of its microbial small molecules as drug candidates, and based on this, proceed with experimental validation of the discovered active substances and lead compound identification.

Yoon So-jung, CEO of Standigm, stated, “We expect that Standigm's AI technology, which has already proven to improve efficiency in the drug development process in the field of organic chemistry, will also bring good results in the field of synthetic biology.” Yoon Yeo-jun, CEO of MolGen Bio, said, “The potential activity of microbe-derived small molecules, the most important resource for drug development, can be efficiently discovered through AI technology, and by applying synthetic biology, large-scale production and lead compound acquisition can be achieved in a short period.” He added, “Based on the expertise of both companies, we will closely cooperate to produce high-quality research outcomes.”