With the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the 21st century, humanity has been blazing trails in ways that had been unimaginable in the past. In recent years, AI has emerged as a pioneer in medicine by offering new possibilities in drug development. At Korea University (KU), Professor Kang Jae Woo and his research team partnered with the bioventure Lmito Therapeutics to give rise to new hopes in the field of pharmaceutics.

AI has been responsible for many groundbreaking innovations in the healthcare industry, and it can now be applied to nearly every aspect of the pharmaceutical industry as well. The role of AI in pharmaceutics often has a lot to do with using automated algorithms in order to perform tasks that have previously relied on manual labor or human intelligence. Professor Kang and his team are some of the people who have tapped the endless potential of AI’s data processing technology to bring about progress in the development of life-changing drugs.

Professor Kang’s research focused on deriving the leading substance for the treatment of severe neurological diseases by using AI technology. His team succeeded in deriving this substance merely ten weeks after their partnership with Lmito Therapeutics in February. This is especially noteworthy considering the fact that it takes around one to two years on average to derive the leading substance for the treatment of severe neurological diseases after identifying the target. Professor Kang’s use of AI has made the same thing possible in a significantly less amount of time.

Out of the top 50 substances derived using the AI drug development platform made by Professor Kang’s research team, Lmito Therapeutics selected 23 drugs on the basis of the prediction of 3D structural based activity of the target protein. What is particularly encouraging is that after testing 11 of the drugs, it was found that cellular activity was found in all the 11 tests. Professor Kang claims these results were made possible due to his team’s unconventional approach to using AI in pharmaceutics. Whereas traditional research is more target oriented, Professor Kang’s team deviated from this method and instead focused on teaching the AI to predict the effect of the drug on the level of the transcriptome within the cell.

The AI platform made by Professor Kang’s research team was constructed based on previous models that won awards in various international medical AI competitions in the past several years. In 2017, Professor Kang’s team was awarded as Best Performer in the NCI-CPTAC DREAM Proteogenomics Computational Challenge for the first time as a Korean team. Apart from the DREAM Challenge, Professor Kang’s team was able to demonstrate their talents in the field of AI by beating Google to win first place in all five of the assessment stages in the BioASQ Task 7B-Phase B hosted by the United States (U.S.) National Institute of Health (NIH) and the European Union (EU).

As AI begins to play an increasingly important role in the field of scientific research, many tend to feel concerned at the prospect of AI taking over the role of humans. However, this research shows that there is much potential to be unlocked if humans learn to cooperate with AI instead of viewing it as a threat. Commenting on the positive outlook that the research results have brought, Professor Kang said, “We will later be able to develop drugs that can successfully treat severe neurological diseases by working with the leading substance optimization technology accumulated by Lmito Therapeutics.” Indeed, the medical and pharmaceutical industry is sure to benefit from such groundbreaking use of AI.