A2A Pharmaceuticals Inc, a developer of new therapeutic agents that serve highly unmet patient needs, on Tuesday stated that it plans to design and co-develop oncology drug candidates using its proprietary AI-enabled drug discovery platform SCULPT under an agreement with Daewoong Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, based in South Korea.

The companies will collaborate on up to three oncology drug targets to accelerate Daewoong's efforts to develop innovative oncology treatments through open collaboration.

This collaboration allows A2A to use its computational drug discovery platform to design new compound structures, which will be synthesized and evaluated by Daewoong. The companies will actively cooperate in preclinical optimization and selection of lead candidates to enter the clinic.

Pursuant to the agreement, A2A will receive upfront and preclinical milestones for each discovery target and could receive clinical and commercialization milestones, and royalties. A2A will have the option to develop compounds that Daewoong decides not to pursue.

A2A's SCULPT technology enables the design of novel ligands specifically to match the unique topological features of disease targets and has integrated artificial intelligence/deep learning tools within the platform. SCULPT radically accelerates lead drug discovery and optimization through systematic design, creating a broad range of highly selective new drug candidates for difficult to drug targets.