SK Biopharma and twoXAR collaborate on lung cancer

South Korea CNS medicines specialist SK Biopharmaceuticals and twoXAR, a US artificial intelligence (AI)-driven biopharmaceutical company, today announced an agreement to discover and develop first-in-class therapeutics for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Under the agreement, twoXAR will use its AI discovery technology to identify a set of initial candidates with the potential to treat lung cancer through novel biological mechanisms of action. After screening, SK Biopharmaceuticals plans to use its internal AI drug design technology to optimize a lead candidate and then conduct IND-enabling studies. SK Biopharmaceuticals will retain exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize the drug candidate. twoXAR will receive an upfront payment and will be eligible for development and commercial milestone payments in addition to royalties.

“AI-powered approaches are pioneering new, more efficient ways to find promising new drug candidates and are enabling SK Biopharmaceuticals to build the next-generation pharmaceutical company,” said Cheol-Young Maeng, vice president of cancer research at SK Biopharmaceuticals, adding: “We are excited to combine twoXAR’s and SK Biopharmaceuticals’ technologies because of the potential to progress drug candidates from hypotheses to IND-enabling studies faster than ever before.”