Pharos I Bio and Kolon Pharmaceutical Win Government Project for AI-Driven Lung Cancer Drug Development

Joint Development of Next-Generation EGFR Inhibitor
Total Project Budget Set at 3.52 Billion Won

Pharos I Bio has been selected as the lead institution for the Ministry of Health and Welfare's AI drug discovery support project and will collaborate with Kolon Pharmaceutical to develop next-generation lung cancer treatments.

From the left, Pharos iBio, Kolon Pharmaceutical corporate logo images. Pharos iBio

Pharos I Bio announced on June 1 that it has been selected for the "Structure-Based AI Drug Discovery Support Project," overseen by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. The total project budget amounts to 3.52 billion won.

The project will be led by Pharos I Bio, with Kolon Pharmaceutical participating as a joint research institution. The two companies plan to use the AI-based drug discovery platform "Chemiverse" to identify candidate substances for the next-generation pan-EGFR inhibitor "PHI-701" and advance them to preclinical studies.

Pharos I Bio will perform drug design based on three-dimensional protein structures, ADME/Tox prediction, synthesis, and efficacy evaluation. Kolon Pharmaceutical will be responsible for mechanism research, preclinical efficacy evaluation, and indication exploration.

PHI-701 is an oral targeted anti-cancer drug currently under development to overcome resistance mechanisms in EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It has been designed to simultaneously modulate both EGFR mutant proteins and tumor microenvironment-related signaling.

Through this project, Pharos I Bio aims to expand the application scope of its AI drug discovery platform from rare diseases to oncology and to diversify its pipeline portfolio. Jeonghyuk Yoon, CEO of Pharos I Bio, stated, "Through this project, we will continue to demonstrate the commercial competitiveness of our AI drug discovery capabilities."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.