Seoul, South Korea and Toronto, Canada – Samjin Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. (“Samjin”; CEO, Yong Ju Choi) a pharmaceutical company devoted to develop innovative drugs to treat diseases with high unmet medical needs, and Cyclica Inc. (“Cyclica”), a neo-biotech with the vision to advance arobust and sustainable drug discovery pipeline announced today a co-development agreement for drug discovery.
Under the co-development agreement, Samjin will propose novel protein targets for drug discovery to Cyclica, and Cyclica will work to discover drug candidates to the proposed targets using its proprietary, AI-enabled, drug discovery platform. Samjin will carry out the experimental validation and take the lead in further developing/commercializing the most promising drug candidate compounds.
Photo: Samjin-Cyclica Collaboration Agreement for AI Drug Discovery; Left) Naheed Kurji (CEO of Cyclica), Right) Soo Min Lee (Head of Samjin Pharm Research Center)
Soo Min Lee PhD, Head of Samjin Pharm Research Center, said “We can rapidly expand our drug research pipelines and lower the cost and time required to develop a new drug by utilizing Cyclica’s AI-based drug discovery platforms from this research collaboration. We will continue expanding our network of research collaboration with other companies or research institutes in order to develop innovative drugs efficiently.
“Cyclica’s unique ability to advance drug discovery programs for targets across the entire proteome, in combination with Samjin’s expertise in proposing novel targets, has tremendous potential. We look forward to progressing this exciting collaboration, collectively working to drug the undruggable” says Naheed Kurji, CEO, Co-Founder and President of Cyclica.
Cyclica has partnered with multiple biotech and pharma companies worldwide and have recently been named by Business Insider as a top biotech company set to take off in 2022.
About Cyclica
Cyclica advances molecules that embrace the complexity of the disease. Our work spans dozens of collaborations with large pharma and biotech and several joint ventures. We are a passionate team of biotech and pharma professionals, biologists, chemists, and computer scientists who live and labour at the intersection of our collective expertise. To learn more about Cyclica and how we partner, please visit www.cyclicarx.com.
About Samjin
Since its establishment in 1968, Samjin has grown one of the major pharmaceutical companies in South Korea. The main business has expanded from primary care and specialty care to dietary supplements, functional foods, and contract manufacturing of APIs and finished pharmaceutical products. Samjin has been also devoted to research and development of new drugs, and has been actively developing innovative drugs to treat diseases with high unmet medical needs such as cancer and fibrosis. Samjin (005500:KS) is a publicly traded company under KOSPI. To learn more about Samjin, please visit www.samjinpharm.co.kr.
Forward Looking Information
This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information which include, among other things, plans to advance one or more drug discovery programs by Cyclica and Samjin based on novel protein targets. Such statements and information are based on management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management, and involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results performance or achievements to be materially different from that expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements and information. Although we believe that we have a reasonable basis for each forward-looking statement and forward-looking information contained in this press release, we caution you that these statements are based on a combination of facts and factors currently known by us and our projections of the future, about which we cannot be certain. We cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements and forward-looking information in this press release will prove to be accurate
Media Contacts:
Cyclica: Jennifer Sacco, VP of Marketing and Communications | jennifer.sacco@cyclicrx.com
Samjin: Myungjae Lee, Staff of Communications | mjlee@samjinpharm.co.kr