South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT on Sunday held a "K-Moonshot AI Drug Mission field consultation meeting" at the Catholic University of Korea's Seoul St. Mary's Hospital campus.

The event was designed to share the project's direction with experts from industry, academia, research institutes and hospitals and to gather feedback from the field ahead of the mission's full-scale launch.

The K-Moonshot AI drug mission is a national research and development project that seeks to innovate the drug development process using AI and to bring together key capabilities such as data, AI models and experimental infrastructure. Its core aim is to apply AI across the entire drug development process, including candidate discovery, drug design and efficacy and toxicity prediction, shifting from a discovery-driven approach to an AI-based design-driven approach.

Nam Jin-woo (남진우), the mission's overall director and programme director, presented the background and goals based on South Korea's drug development capabilities and the current state of AI technology. Nam stressed that the goal is to accelerate the speed of the drug discovery stage by 10 times by 2035 and open new possibilities for overcoming intractable diseases.

Participants identified key tasks including securing high-quality bio data and building systems for its use, strengthening AI models and research infrastructure, establishing a foundation for industry-academia-research-hospital cooperation, and linking research outcomes to industrialisation.

The ministry will reflect key challenges raised and suggestions to refine the roadmap to flesh out the mission's execution strategy. It will also push policy support such as building data and AI research infrastructure and setting up an R&D support system.

Kim Sung-soo (김성수), director general for R&D Policy at the ministry, said it would incorporate opinions presented from the field into the mission's direction and detailed strategy and create an environment in which researchers and companies can take on world-class challenges.