Recently, Shanghai Escugen Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Escugen") and Shanghai GFK Pharmaceutical Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "GFK") officially signed a cooperation agreement. Under the agreement, GFK will leverage its independently developed AI Bio-Big Data Intelligent Platform to provide Escugen with accurate and efficient target discovery services, helping Escugen expand the boundaries of innovative R&D. In turn, Escugen will give full play to its strengths in innovative drug R&D to accelerate the new drug development process.
This cooperation is a key initiative for Escugen to strengthen its innovative R&D capabilities and expand target layout, as well as a concrete practice for GFK's AI bio-big data technology to empower the biopharmaceutical industry. GFK will fully utilize the analytical and mining advantages of its big data platform, combine with Escugen's profound accumulation in ADC drug R&D and the fields of anti-tumor and autoimmune diseases, focus on unmet clinical needs, and accurately screen potential high-quality targets for Escugen. This will help Escugen rapidly advance the R&D of ADC and monoclonal antibody drugs against new targets based on its existing technology platforms, further enrich its R&D pipeline and enhance product competitiveness.
Dr. Zhou Qing, Founder and Chairman of Escugen, stated: "The core breakthroughs in biopharmaceutical research are inseparable from the deep integration of cutting-edge technologies and R&D practices, and the most advanced AI technology is the key force reshaping the paradigm of innovative drug R&D. Traditional target discovery relies on a large number of experimental verifications, with long cycles and low efficiency. In contrast, AI technology can efficiently integrate multi-dimensional biological data, explore potential molecular correlations, greatly improve the accuracy and efficiency of scientific research, and help us break through the bottlenecks of traditional R&D. By partnering with GFK this time, we aim to leverage its advanced AI bio-big data technology to deeply integrate the most cutting-edge AI capabilities into our innovative research processes, focus on the unmet needs in the fields of anti-tumor and autoimmune diseases, accurately explore high-quality targets, promote the rapid translation of scientific research results, help us build a more competitive innovative drug pipeline, and bring more clinically valuable treatment options to patients."
Dr. Liu Xiao, Founder and Chairman of GFK, said: "The core cause of the low success rate of traditional pharmaceutical R&D lies in the exploration of laws through low-dimensional trial and error. The integration of AI and bio-big data technologies can draw accurate molecular mechanism positioning maps for various diseases and realize high-dimensional accurate calculation in drug R&D, which is a revolutionary paradigm shift in pharmaceutical R&D." He also emphasized: "The implementation of new technologies and methods still needs to be deeply integrated with experimental research, and the R&D accuracy can be continuously improved through the mutual verification of the two. GFK also hopes to rely on the closed-loop cooperation of the innovative drug ecological chain to create and launch practical and valuable innovative R&D methods for the pharmaceutical industry, and drive the dual improvement of the industry's R&D efficiency and innovation capabilities."
About Escugen
Founded in 2017 in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, Pudong New Area, Shanghai, Shanghai Escugen Biotech Co., Ltd. focuses on the development of innovative drugs for anti-tumor and autoimmune diseases. Its founding team has decades of R&D experience in both international and domestic biopharmaceutical enterprises. The professional R&D team covers antibody engineering, conjugation technology, CMC and clinical development in an all-round way, with an average of more than 10 years of industry experience per member.
Escugen has pioneered the EZWi-Fit® Linker-Payload Technology Platform, holding global intellectual property rights. The clinical safety and efficacy of ADCs based on this platform have been initially verified by the clinical trials currently being carried out by Escugen. Recently, ADCs against innovative targets based on this platform developed by a number of domestic and foreign partners have also successively entered the clinical trial stage.
About GFK
Founded in 2013, Shanghai GFK Pharmaceutical Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. is a high-tech life science enterprise established by a team of returned doctors and professors. Having deepened its layout for a decade to forge core competitiveness, the company takes "AI Technology + Bio-Big Data" as the support to inject innovative impetus into the health industry.
Based on the deep integration of AI and bio-big data, GFK has completed the construction of large-cohort and large-sample real-world molecular mechanism models for nearly 1,000 diseases, forming core data assets covering multiple therapeutic areas such as oncology and autoimmune diseases. These models are not simple collections of data analysis, but GPS navigation maps that accurately map the core pathways of disease occurrence and development, target interaction networks and key regulatory molecules, based on clinical real-world data and molecular biology research. Relying on this core data foundation, GFK is providing pharmaceutical enterprises with a brand-new R&D system and tool chain — AI Servers for Disease-Specific Drug R&D, which realize the digitalization and precision of the entire R&D process, ranging from high-dimensional accurate screening in the target discovery stage, to mechanism verification and dosage optimization of candidate drugs, and to predictive expansion of clinical indications. This closed-loop model of "data modeling + experimental verification" not only aligns with the current industry trend of AI biotechnology from "tool-assisted" to "paradigm innovation", but also solves the pain points of "data silos" and "insufficient interpretability" of traditional AI models with the support of large-sample real-world data, enabling high-dimensional accurate calculation to be truly applied in drug R&D practices.
GFK will continue to deepen the integrated innovation of "AI + Bio-Big Data + Experimental Verification", drive the in-depth transformation of the industry from "experience-driven" to "data-driven", and help more innovative drugs come out efficiently.
