Hongcheon County’s L&P Solution and Chuncheon’s K-Medichem Selected for National Pharmaceutical and Biotech Project

【Financial News, Hongcheon = Reporter Kim Ki-seop】L&P Solution, a tenant company at the Hongcheon National Antibody Cluster, has been selected, together with Chuncheon-based K-Medichem, for a government-funded project to develop a new treatment for atopic dermatitis using artificial intelligence.
According to Hongcheon County on the 7th, L&P Solution and K-Medichem were selected for the AI-based candidate discovery project under the 2026 Technology Development Project Based on Collaboration among Pharmaceutical and Bio Ventures, supervised by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. The project is worth a total of 1 billion won and will run for two years, with K-Medichem serving as the lead research institution and L&P Solution as the joint research institution.
The two companies aim to discover next-generation atopic dermatitis treatment candidates and secure key data needed to enter preclinical development by combining AI-based drug design technology with expertise in medicinal chemistry, synthesis and pharmacological evaluation. Their ultimate goal is to secure candidates with new mechanisms of action and selectivity that address the limitations of existing treatments, and advance them to the preclinical development stage.
Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that requires long-term treatment, making not only drug efficacy but also safety and selectivity important. The companies plan to discover candidates that improve both therapeutic efficacy and drug-like properties through precise AI-based candidate design and medicinal-chemistry-based structural optimization. To this end, they will establish a data feedback system that continuously compares and analyzes AI predictions against actual experimental data and incorporates the results back into the design process.
Since signing a memorandum of understanding for a strategic partnership in November 2023, the two companies have expanded their cooperation through various joint research projects, including the National New Drug Development Project and initiatives to foster leading regional innovation companies. Their collaboration has drawn attention because a drug-development company in the Gangwon region and an AI technology company are joining forces to carry out a government-funded advanced drug-development project at a time when drug-development infrastructure is concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area. The companies plan to establish a new drug-development cooperation model based on technological convergence among regional companies and contribute to strengthening the competitiveness of the AI-bio convergence industry in the Gangwon region.
K-Medichem, based in Chuncheon, is a drug-development company with expertise in developing natural-product-based drugs and bioactive materials, as well as designing and synthesizing drug candidates based on medicinal chemistry. L&P Solution, located at the Hongcheon National Antibody Cluster, is an in silico solutions company that combines computer simulation-based molecular modeling with AI and deep-learning technologies.
A Hongcheon County official said, "It is meaningful that regional companies have joined forces to win a government-funded project amid drug-development infrastructure concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area." The official added, "We will expand the research infrastructure at the antibody cluster and provide greater support for living conditions and administration to develop Hongcheon into a key hub of Korea’s bio industry."

[email protected] Kim Ki-seop Reporter