□ The Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST; President Kunwoo Lee) and Institut Pasteur Korea (CEO Sungkey Jang) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for “exchanges and collaboration in the AI-based drug screening/identification and drug development industries” at 2:00 p.m. on September 5 (Fri) in the Large Conference Room, Institut Pasteur Korea (Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province).
□ With this MOU, the organizations will establish a collaboration system covering exchanges of human resources, materials, information, and research activities, and prepare a common foundation for advancing AI-based drug development to meet a variety of unmet medical needs, including new and variant infectious diseases, aging, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.
□ This MOU is expected to serve as a primer for strengthening collaboration across diverse fields, including (i) education and training of human resources from both organizations and expanded internships and on-the-job training, (ii) joint utilization for advanced equipment and facilities, (iii) information exchanges for academic and industrial trends, and (iv) collaborative research and technical advice.
□ “DGIST has been closely connecting job-oriented human resources development, collaborative research, technology transfer, and commercialization based on the strengths of multidisciplinary research and industry–academia collaboration,” said Director Jaehyung Koo of the Office of Research & University–Industry Collaboration at DGIST. “With this MOU, we will actively promote the discovery of collaborative projects and exchanges between human resources and contribute to creating an AI-based drug development ecosystem and strengthening competitiveness in the regional and national bioindustry by advancing ongoing projects.”
□ “We will create new drug candidates by combining our core technology of a cell-based ultra-fast drug effect screening system combined with AI to precisely screen and optimize effective compounds,” said CEO Sungkey Jang of Institut Pasteur Korea. “Based on collaboration between the two organizations, we will accelerate drug development based on AI and contribute to improving public health.”
□ Meanwhile, DGIST creates future value for the region and country based on interdisciplinary research and innovation education, and has selected human digital twins, physical AI, and quantum sensing as its three future strategy areas to focus on creating an industrial ecosystem.
□ Furthermore, Institut Pasteur Korea is a research institute specializing in infectious diseases and focuses on basic and translational research on the development of infectious disease treatments and vaccines based on its state-of-the-art research competencies.
