AI drug discovery contract services provided by the FRONTEO Drug Discovery AI Factory

「During the fiscal year, the AI drug discovery business centered on DDAIF expanded into 4 models: "co-creation projects," "comprehensive co-creation model," "DDAIF Innovation Bridge" and "in-house and joint research."」

「In July 2025, the company announced that it had used DDAIF to extract candidate target molecules for pancreatic cancer drug discovery and conduct in vitro growth-inhibition tests on cancer cells, confirming a certain level of efficacy. In this experiment, DDAIF successfully extracted 17 candidate target genes from approximately 20,000 human genes in only 2 days. Growth inhibition of pancreatic cancer cells was confirmed for 6 of the 17 genes, and 4 of them were entirely novel candidate target molecules for which no papers reporting an association with pancreatic cancer existed」

「During the fiscal year, the company launched co-creation projects with UBE Corporation, Maruishi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Eisai Co., Ltd. and several other companies in areas including new target discovery and indication discovery, with customers and the company's drug discovery researchers working closely together across organizational boundaries to create final deliverables. In addition, the company entered into an agreement with Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited for the analysis of toxicity-test databases and textual information in toxicity-test reports, and began providing analysis in the new field of safety analysis.」

「The innovative approach used by DDAIF makes it possible to achieve such discontinuous discoveries in a scientific and systematic manner. Approximately 1 year after DDAIF was launched, the company has built up a track record by securing multiple projects since the previous year, including drug discovery target identification and drug repurposing. This track record has been recognized, and the company is currently holding multiple business discussions on co-creation projects in which customers' drug discovery researchers and the company's drug discovery experts work closely together across organizational boundaries to create final deliverables.」

「On 30 January 2024, the company entered into a business alliance agreement with Springer Nature and launched a new service that analyzes data, including papers published in the journals it publishes, using "KIBIT."」

「Drug Discovery AI Factory (DD-AIF), an AI drug discovery business in the life sciences AI field, received inquiries from many pharmaceutical companies after the full-scale launch of its services in July 2023. In October 2023, it secured, among multiple orders, a project from Maruishi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. involving drug repurposing, or the use of existing drugs for other diseases.」

「In FRONTEO's DD-AIF business, combining AI specialized in hypothesis generation with the knowledge of drug discovery researchers has enabled high-throughput generation of high-quality hypotheses, making it possible to produce evidence-based hypotheses rapidly, in large numbers and with high precision.」

「In the newly launched DD-AIF business, our drug discovery researchers will use our proprietary AI engines and applications in the target-selection process, where AI use remains limited, to continuously provide analyses and proposals that contribute to improving the efficiency and speed of customers' drug discovery research and increasing its probability of success.」

「DD-AIF is a drug discovery support service in which biologists with experience and a track record in drug discovery research at pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, as well as expertise in AI, work as a team with data scientists who conduct advanced analyses using the proprietary AI engine "KIBIT" and internally developed AI applications. Through its proprietary methods of information analysis and proposal development, the service will contribute to improving the efficiency and speed of customers' drug discovery research and increasing its probability of success.」