South Korea-based startup Standigm Inc. has announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Institut Pasteur Korea (IPK), the infectious disease-focused research institute contributing to public health, for AI-based drug discovery research for infectious disease.

Under the MoU, the two parties will actively conduct joint research and academic exchanges to derive innovative drug candidates for infectious disease, setting the research priority on discovering novel anti-tubercular drug candidates.

Previously, the two parties conducted research collaboration on anti-tubercular drug discovery, applying Standigm's deep learning technology to the data generated through IPK's cell-based screening of one hundred thousand compounds against tuberculosis. As a result, hit compounds with several key scaffolds effective in multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR/XDR-TB) were identified.

The follow-up research on these hits, 'Validation and optimization of an AI-driven platform for anti-tubercular drug discovery' has been selected for the Research Investment for Global Health Technology Fund's ("RIGHT Fund") "Technical Accelerator Award". The RIGHT Fund is a global health research funding foundation established in 2018 through the public-private partnership between the Ministry of Health and Welfare of South Korea, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and Korean life science companies to address the medical and technological needs towards alleviating the burden of infectious diseases especially in developing countries.

(From left) Jinhan Kim, CEO of Standigm and Youngmee Jee, CEO of Institut Pasteur Korea, exchanged a Memorandum of Understanding.