From data to microscopy, award winners are innovating

Years of laboratory research and the inconveniences during the process prompted Park Yong-keun, a physics professor at KAIST, to start his own business and eventually found Tomocube.

Tomocube CEO Park Yong-keun, left, poses with the company's microscope at its office in Daejeon. [KIM SEONG-TAE]

Years of laboratory research and the inconveniences during the process prompted Park Yong-keun, a physics professor at KAIST, to start his own business and eventually found Tomocube.

Tomocube developed the world’s first laboratory microscopes using a technique called holotomography. The high-performance microscopes negate the need to add chemical compounds to cells because the holotomography laser technology can generate three-dimensional imaging.

“I’ve lived as both a scientist and engineer,” Park said, “But I wanted to see people actually use my product.”

Following the founding of the company in 2015, the microscopes have been supplied to research universities, such as Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Tomocube is among the six winners of the first Innovation Start-up Korea Award during a forum co-hosted by the JoongAng Ilbo, KAIST and Seoul National University. The awardees must have been in business fewer than 7 years and exhibit high growth potential.

Brightonix Imaging won for its expertise on artificial intelligence analytics of medical images. The system it created combines high-resolution positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to detect brain disorders with advanced analytic programs. It also developed a technique capable of simultaneously carrying out PET and computed tomography(CT) scanning.

The company claims its system works better than existing scanning products in diagnosing degenerative brain disorders.

Founded by Kim Gun-ho, a mechanical engineering professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Recense Medical specializes in a relatively new method of anesthesia using rapid cooling technologies. The method can be used for patients undergoing retinal surgeries, ensuring reduced procedure time and less pain compared with the current standard of care.

The cooling technique can produce anesthetic effects by dipping below minus 15 degrees Celsius.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted the company’s scanning product a classification track known as De Novo designed for more swift approval.

With the new generation anesthesia, patients with macular degeneration won’t have to get an injection.

Quantum Cat became the world’s first to commercialize the deployment of gold as a catalyst after it succeeded in developing a novel synthesis technology for nanoparticles. The company was founded in 2019 by graduates of KAIST.

The gold-based catalyst is superior to existing chemical catalysts since the conventional ones have limited usability under certain temperature conditions.

FriendliAI is offering cloud-based services that facilitate corporate clients with the development of large artificial intelligence analytics programs or systems.

Chun Byung-gon, a computer science professor at Seoul National University, established the company last year.

The PeriFlow cloud service can help smaller corporations develop their own analytics models using machine learning. Its launch came as the amount of data skyrockets and data structures become more complex.

The change led to demand for analytics systems capable of processing a myriad of data in a short time period.

Being large, or hyperscale, means that the AI model has more parameters and a better capacity to efficiently process data. Unlike other AI models, it will have a more accurate text analysis algorithm and will provide speech-to-text and text-to-speech responses that are almost human-like.

Pinotbio aims to provide treatments for cancer and retinal diseases based on a class of biopharmaceutical drugs called antibody-drug conjugates or ADCs.

The ADCs are designed as a targeted therapy for treating cancer. Unlike chemotherapy, ADCs are intended to target and kill tumor cells while sparing healthy cells.

The new method is considered a breakthrough in cancer treatment because conventional chemotherapy could kill healthy cells, leaving patients with side-effects.

The start-up, founded by researchers at Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology in 2017, succeeded in releasing candidate drugs for cancer and glaucoma based on the ADC technique.

BY KO SUK-HYUN, PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]