Dong-A ST's MetaVia Partners with Syntekabio for AI Clinical Contract

Why They Joined Forces for Drug Repurposing

This article was released as Pharm Edaily Premium Content on August 2, 2025, at 10:00 AM.

[Seungkwon Kim, Edaily Reporter] Dong-A ST‘s MetaVia Partners with Syntekabio for AI Clinical Contract: Why They Joined Forces for Drug Repurposing

Dong-A ST’s subsidiary MetaVia has signed a research contract with Syntekabio, a first-generation AI drug development company. Through this collaboration, MetaVia will receive AI-powered screening services to analyze and verify the potential for DA-1241, a candidate compound currently undergoing Phase 2 clinical trials in the United States, to be used for diseases beyond its existing indication.

The partnership between MetaVia and Syntekabio is expected to serve as an important case study. Particularly, using AI-based analysis to explore opportunities for indication expansion by examining the structural and biological characteristics of drugs under clinical development represents a prime example of the convergence between traditional drug development and AI-driven drug discovery.

MetaVia‘s Strategic Reasons for AI Drug Development Collaboration

DA-1241 is known to activate the GPR119 receptor, promoting GLP-1 production and demonstrating various physiological effects including liver protection, inflammation improvement, and blood glucose reduction. The compound’s entry into Phase 2 clinical trials after demonstrating safety makes it particularly promising for rapid commercialization through drug repurposing.

In this contract, Syntekabio will utilize its core AI drug development platform to analyze DA-1241‘s potential for discovering new indications. The platform is designed with an “all-against-all” screening structure that can target approximately 1,500 target proteins using DeepMatcher’s fine-tuning tools.

Graph of BMI Change During Multiple Ascending Dose (MAD) Study of Obesity Drug Candidate ‘DA-1726’ in Phase 1 Clinical Trial (Source: Dong-A ST)

“We are continuously discussing collaborations with domestic AI drug development companies,” said Hyung Heon Kim, CEO of MetaVia. “It‘s possible to screen whether DA-1241 can be utilized for other diseases,” he emphasized. Kim explained the rationale for AI adoption: “Introducing AI significantly reduces research time and costs”.

A Syntekabio representative noted: “AI-based analysis of the structural and biological characteristics of drugs under clinical development not only explores opportunities for indication expansion but also enables confirmation of other functionalities based on reactivity with all off-targets”. He added: “This indirect prediction capability extends to prognosis, making it a representative example of the convergence between traditional and AI drug development”.

MetaVia’s collaboration with Syntekabio for AI-based drug repurposing stems from strategic goals of discovering new indications for existing pipeline assets and maximizing development efficiency. While DA-1241 is being developed as a treatment for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), CEO Kim maintains an open view toward broader indications.

“DA-1241 has proven to be an extremely safe drug through clinical trials, and while we‘re currently focusing on MASH, there’s no specific requirement to limit it to MASH only,” Kim explained. “Since it naturally promotes GLP-1 production in the body, increased GLP-1 generation can improve inflammation and provide many beneficial effects”.

DA-1241 recently demonstrated significant results in Phase 2 trials, meeting key efficacy endpoints. The study showed that the 100mg dose of DA-1241 resulted in statistically significant reductions in ALT levels at weeks 4 and 8, with near-significant reduction at week 16.

Traditional drug repurposing involves finding new indications for existing drugs, offering advantages of reduced development time and costs by utilizing compounds with established safety profiles. AI can accelerate this process, and MetaVia is pursuing this strategy to maximize DA-1241‘s commercial value.

Syntekabio’s Core Competitive Advantage: Clinical Contracts

Syntekabio is the only domestic company with a comprehensive AI drug development platform, supporting the entire process from synthetic drug discovery to lead compound optimization and preclinical studies. The company‘s core platform, DeepMatcher, is based on drug-target interaction prediction technology.

The platform utilizes language models generated from three major databases: Google AlphaFold’s 200 million protein structure information, the Protein Data Bank‘s 100 million protein-ligand 3D binding information, and a library of 10 billion compounds.

Syntekabio’s biggest differentiator is its proprietary data center. The company has built the world‘s first ABS (AI Bio Supercom) center utilizing the natural convection structure of termite mounds. This approach addresses the high power consumption and cooling costs of traditional data centers, attracting market attention.

Process of Syntekabio’s AI Drug Development Platform (Source: Syntekabio)

Based on 2024 annual monitoring results, Syntekabio’s data center achieved a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.13 and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) of 0.46. These high-efficiency metrics are comparable to global cloud companies, demonstrating the feasibility of operating high-performance supercomputing infrastructure while conserving energy and resources.

“Most AI drug development companies worldwide outsource data center operations,” explained Jong Sun Jung, CEO of Syntekabio. “This increases costs, making it difficult to provide services at competitive prices like ours”.

The global AI drug discovery market is projected to grow from $780 million in 2023 to $19.9 billion by 2033, representing an annual growth rate of 38.25%.

김승권 (peace@edaily.co.kr)