Daewoong Pharmaceutical partners with A2A

Daewoong Pharmaceutical is partnering with a U.S. biotech company to jointly develop anticancer treatments.

The Korean pharmaceutical company announced Monday that it signed an agreement with New York City-based A2A Pharmaceuticals on Sunday to find new drug candidates for anti-cancer therapies.

The deal was signed ahead of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, which is being held in San Francisco through Thursday.

Under the agreement, A2A Pharmaceuticals will design new compounds for Daewoong Pharmaceutical utilizing its Systematic Combinatorial Unification of chemical groups into Libraries against a Pharmacological Target (Sculpt) technology platform.

The Korean company will then use the compounds to conduct follow-up material synthesis and evaluations.

Sculpt predicts the binding forces and properties of pharmacological material, which can shorten the initial drug discovery process while lowering costs. The platform has been used by A2A Pharmaceuticals in the development of anticancer and intractable disorder treatments.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical said by using Sculpt, it can increase its success probability in developing new anticancer treatments and build its portfolio.

The company is listed on the Korea Exchange and has a market capitalization of 1.63 trillion won ($1.41 billion). It has been targeting cancer therapies as a key area of development.

According to Mordor Intelligence, the global cancer therapy market is expected to grow from $136 billion in 2018 to $221 billion by 2024.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical has been partnering with multinational pharmaceutical companies through joint ventures. Earlier this month, it announced it will establish a joint venture with Avacta to co-develop immune disease treatments based on cell therapy platforms.

BY KO JUN-TAE [ko.juntae@joongang.co.kr]