Dong-A Socio Group Builds AI Drug Discovery Platform 'AIDDP'

Integrated Support for Drug Candidate Design and Analysis
Stepwise Advancement Toward Autonomous Research Agents

Dong-A Socio Group announced on the 29th that its IT subsidiary DAI and Dong-A ST have built the AI Drug Discovery Platform (AIDDP), a new drug development platform that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and biodata, and have officially begun operating it.

Employees of Dong-A Socio Holdings are utilizing the AI drug development platform 'AIDDP'. Dong-A Socio Holdings

AIDDP is an integrated research platform that enables the entire new drug research process—ranging from the design and prediction of drug candidates to the visualization and management of analysis results—to be conducted within a single environment. According to the company, the platform was built so that key research workflows could be linked and leveraged in one place, moving away from the conventional approach of using various analysis tools and data individually.

AIDDP incorporates Dong-A ST researchers’ accumulated experience in new drug research, computer-based analytical capabilities, existing research workflows, and AI-driven structure design and analysis modules. Through this, the company says that the entire research process—from candidate exploration to examining binding potential and structural stability with target proteins—can be performed on a single platform.

Major features include: ▲ Biodata visualization based on single-cell and spatial transcriptomics technology ▲ AI-driven new compound generation and design support ▲ Affinity prediction between drug candidate compounds and target proteins ▲ Docking and molecular dynamics simulations ▲ Integrated management of research projects, analysis results, and computational histories, among others.

Dong-A Socio Group plans to accumulate the data and analysis results generated during research processes, as well as researchers’ expertise, as core digital assets for the group through AIDDP. Based on this, the company expects to reduce dependence on external solutions, strengthen its own AI-based drug development capabilities and intellectual property (IP) foundation, and further expand AIDDP into a common AI R&D platform that can be used across various research fields and affiliates within the group.

Going forward, Dong-A Socio Group plans to sequentially add features such as large-scale compound virtual screening for candidate discovery, AI-based academic paper, patent, and internal/external research information search capabilities, as well as agentic AI-based research support functions. In the long term, the company aims to evolve AIDDP into an AI-driven research platform that assists researchers in exploration, analysis, interpretation, and decision-making, thereby enhancing research productivity and competitiveness in drug development.

Hyejin Han, CEO of DAI, said, "AIDDP is the group’s first proprietary AI drug development platform built by combining Dong-A ST researchers’ drug development expertise and research assets with DAI’s AI and IT capabilities. It is meaningful in that this marks the starting point for transforming the group’s internal data and research expertise into core assets and proprietary IP, not just by using AI as a research tool but by innovating research workflows."

Jaehoon Jeong, CEO of Dong-A ST, stated, "By building AIDDP, we have laid the foundation for researchers to improve the time and success rates associated with optimizing drug candidates at the early stages of new drug development. We will continue to incorporate feedback from research sites to enhance the platform's features and usability, and ultimately develop it into a core R&D infrastructure that supports researchers’ AI-based studies, thereby strengthening Dong-A ST's competitiveness in drug development."

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