South Korean firm Daewoong Pharmaceutical has entered a research collaboration with UK-based Sygnature Discovery to expand its global open innovation for novel drug development. 

Sygnature Discovery will provide its proprietary Fragment-Based Drug Discovery (FBDD) and virtual high throughput screening (vHTS) to accelerate Daewoong's novel drug discovery for autoimmune diseases. Additionally, Daewoong will receive support in protein science and crystallography to validate and secure mechanism of action. The company has a market-leading track record in drug discovery including 22 compounds delivered into the clinic (Phases I to III) since 2011, 41 compounds into pre-clinical development and over 170 patent applications with Sygnature Discovery scientists named as inventors.

Through this collaboration, Daewoong Pharmaceutical expects to broaden its drug discovery scope to the field of protein-protein interaction (PPI) as a part of next-generation drug discovery strategy.

In 2022, Daewoong expanded its global market presence by entering into a license agreement worth $923 million, which granted permission for the use of 'Fexuclue', a medicine licensed for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease, in the Philippines and Ecuador within the first year of its launch.