Paros AI Bio has been selected as a performing organization for a national project focused on developing AI-based cancer drugs.
On August 6, Paros AI Bio announced that it, along with JackTusOnco, has been chosen for the AI-based candidate substance exploration segment of the '2026 Pharmaceutical Bio Venture Collaborative Technology Development Project' organized by the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises and Startups.
Paros AI Bio has built experience from candidate substance discovery to clinical entry using its proprietary AI drug development platform, Chemiverse. The company is expanding external research collaborations and has been selected for three research and development projects this year, overseen by the National New Drug Development Project Group, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.
In this project, Paros AI Bio and JackTusOnco plan to discover candidate substances that inhibit the iron-regulatory protein IRP2 using AI. The two companies will conduct joint research over 24 months, with a total research budget of 1 billion won, of which Paros AI Bio will receive 400 million won.
Paros AI Bio will be responsible for candidate substance design and optimization using Chemiverse, while JackTusOnco will handle compound synthesis, biological validation, and non-clinical research. The two companies aim to enhance development speed and success rates by validating AI-predicted candidate substances through experiments and incorporating the results back into AI model training.
Yoon Jeong-hyuk, CEO of Paros AI Bio, stated, "The selection for this project is a significant example of how the Chemiverse platform can be utilized across various new targets and research fields."
Previously, Paros AI Bio signed a memorandum of understanding for joint research in AI-based drug development with the Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation. This agreement aims to combine Paros AI Bio's AI drug design platform with K-MediHub's structural biology research capabilities to advance the development of next-generation EGFR-targeted cancer drugs.
Recently, in the field of AI drug development, the ability to secure and utilize three-dimensional structural information of proteins during the candidate substance discovery process has emerged as a key competitive advantage. The company explained, "As the need for new treatments targeting EGFR mutation lung cancer and patients resistant to existing therapies grows, approaches that combine AI design and structural biology are gaining attention."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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