GI Innovation (358570.KQ) announced Wednesday that it will present two research findings, including a new drug candidate derived from its 'GI-SMART' platform, at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2026 conference to be held in San Diego, USA, from April 17 to 22.
In addition to existing drug candidates that have entered clinical trials, GI Innovation has been developing various new drugs based on its proprietary platform for preclinical-stage technology licensing. The macrophage engager 'GI-128,' whose preclinical results will be unveiled at AACR, is a bispecific antibody that simultaneously targets PD-L1, an immune checkpoint protein highly expressed in tumor cells, and LILRBs, a macrophage receptor. As macrophages, which account for 20 to 40 percent of immune cells within the tumor microenvironment, have recently gained attention as a new therapeutic target, macrophage engagers targeting these cells are emerging as a next-generation immuno-oncology strategy. GI-128 was also selected as a lead compound development project in the Korea Drug Development Fund (KDDF)'s second 'Drug Foundation Expansion Research' program in 2024.
Additionally, research results evaluating the feasibility of fixed-dose administration through pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) modeling and simulation based on GI-102 Phase 1 clinical data will be presented as a poster. This research was conducted in collaboration with the research team of Professor Lim Hyung-seok at Asan Medical Center in Seoul.
"Existing IL-2-based therapies have had limitations in treatment convenience and scalability as weight-based dosing was primarily applied due to high toxicity and hepatic response variability," a GI Innovation official said. "GI-102 demonstrates the potential for fixed-dose administration based on excellent safety and tolerability, securing the potential to achieve both treatment convenience and development efficiency when expanding to various indications including anti-aging."
"We are currently deriving numerous new pipelines using the GI-SMART platform and artificial intelligence (AI), and this presentation shares some of those achievements," said Jang Myung-ho, CEO of GI Innovation. "We plan to continue introducing globally competitive drug candidates going forward."