"Antibody Drug Development, You Can Achieve It Quickly with AI Support"

Interview with Park Eun-young, CEO of AINB
Promoting Antibody Drug Discovery through AI Drug Development
"Ultimately, Discovery Will Be Possible Within a Few Hours"

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] "Developing antibody drugs is, in a way, actually close to labor-intensive work. If we improve efficiency through artificial intelligence (AI), we will be able to find the desired antibody therapeutics within a few hours."

On the 3rd, Park Eun-young, CEO of AINB, who met with Asia Economy, is a figure who has accumulated various experiences related to antibody new drug development through Samsung Bioepis, ABL Bio, and others. However, together with Seo Seung-woo, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) who worked at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Standigm, they co-founded AINB last September. He explained the reason for founding the company, saying, "In fact, drug discovery is close to labor-intensive work, so I have always been thinking about ways to make it more efficient," and "after learning about AI development, I felt the need to apply it."

AI drug development is emerging as a new topic in the pharmaceutical and bio industries, with overseas companies like Insilico Medicine starting clinical trials on humans, and various traditional pharmaceutical companies in Korea such as SK Chemicals, Daewoong Pharmaceutical, and JW Pharmaceutical partnering with companies like Standigm and Oncobix to develop AI-based drugs.

However, in Korea, most AI drug development is focused on synthetic drugs (chemical drugs). Overseas, there are various attempts in the biopharmaceutical field such as antibody drugs, with Google's DeepMind releasing predicted protein structures through 'AlphaFold,' and companies like Abcellera and Mapsilico emerging. But domestically, except for AINB, it is difficult to find companies claiming to apply AI development methods to biopharmaceuticals.

CEO Park attributed this to the 'difference in technology maturity.' He said, "It is difficult to find innovation where innovation is already happening," and "Synthetic drugs have become difficult to break through without innovation on a new level, so AI drug development was established as a breakthrough." Park added, "Antibody drugs, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), are just beginning to be commercialized and still represent an area of innovation," but "now that it is entering a certain maturity stage, I believe others will also turn their attention to AI development for antibody drugs like me."

He also hinted that the introduction of AI development in antibody therapeutics is actually accelerating the development speed. CEO Park said, "Setting aside the efficacy and accuracy of the drug, antibody discovery itself through AI is almost possible within a day," and "We continue to improve accuracy, and ultimately the goal is to find the desired candidate substance within just a few hours."

AINB is currently focusing this work primarily on the oncology field. CEO Park said, "The advantage of AI is that it can have flexible scalability without limitations on targets and diseases," but "for now, we are concentrating on the oncology sector where we can verify and showcase our model." Since AI development technology is still in its early stages, he expressed the intention to proceed with this process step by step. CEO Park explained, "Although there are some reports overseas of AI being used in antibody drug development, as far as I know, there are no cases designed entirely through AI from the early stages," and "Our primary goal is to gradually build the platform and catch up with the schedule of target selection to preclinical completion, which currently takes about five years when done by humans, using AI drug discovery technology."

Recognizing this potential, AINB recently completed seed-stage investment funding. Yuhan Corporation and Medytox Venture Investment participated, with Yuhan Corporation especially supporting as a strategic investor (SI). CEO Park said, "We plan to complete the planned technology verification by the end of this year and proceed with the next round of investment based on that."