Galux, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug development company, has been selected for the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund’s Pre-ICON program, a initiative aimed at nurturing promising innovative firms. This selection grants Galux access to up to 7 billion KRW (approximately 5.2 million USD) in guarantee support. The company plans to leverage this backing to enhance its AI protein design technology and accelerate the development of its proprietary drug candidates.
Galux announced its selection for the Pre-ICON program on Tuesday. This program is designed to support the growth of promising startups that demonstrate technological prowess, market potential, and growth prospects.
With this selection, Galux aims to bolster the competitiveness of its in-house AI protein design platform, GaluxDesign. The company intends to allocate the secured guarantee support towards expanding its AI infrastructure, including graphics processing units (GPUs) and computing resources, upgrading experimental research facilities, and recruiting top-tier research talent.
Galux is pioneering technology that leverages physicochemical principles to analyze protein structures and molecular interactions, enabling the design of proteins and antibodies crucial for drug development. The company’s approach goes beyond merely creating candidate substances that bind to specific targets. It focuses on incorporating essential characteristics such as binding affinity, stability, and development potential from the initial design phase – factors critical for developing viable therapeutics.
According to the company, this technology has yielded impressive results, with an average antibody binding success rate exceeding 30% using just 50 AI-designed candidates per Target.
Furthermore, in a comparison against nine common Targets disclosed by U.S. firms Nabla Bio and Chai Discovery, Galux reported successfully securing experimentally validated antibodies for eight of these Targets.
Galux is actively applying its AI protein design technology in collaborative research with domestic and international pharmaceutical and biotech companies, while simultaneously advancing its own drug pipeline. Among its proprietary candidates in development are dual antibody immuno-oncology agents targeting PD-1 and IL-18.
Seok Cha-ok and Park Tae-yong, co-Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Galux, emphasized that in the realm of AI protein design, the key isn’t just generating numerous candidates. It’s about precisely designing substances with the desired characteristics that have real potential to become drugs. They added that this Pre-ICON selection will serve as a catalyst to accelerate the development of the core technologies and proprietary pipeline, ultimately enhancing the global competitiveness.
Galux, founded in September 2020, is the brainchild of Professor Seok Cha-ok from Seoul National University’s Department of Chemistry and his students. The company has developed an AI-driven drug design platform, building on the university research team’s extensive expertise in protein structure and interaction prediction. After securing seed funding from Intervest in early 2021, Galux solidified its growth trajectory with a strategic investment of 5 billion KRW (about 3.7 million USD) from Kakao Brain in December of the same year.