BasgenBio wins ₩3.6 bil. Korea backing for digital-twin hair loss drug

BasgenBio said it has been selected for Korea’s Deep-tech Challenge Project, or DCP, and will use the funding to advance a drug program for androgenetic alopecia, the most common hormone-driven form of hair loss, by combining biobank-based multi-omics clinical cohort data with AI and digital twin modeling.

Yonsei University and Dankook University will participate in the project, the company said.

BasgenBio’s key government-backed program support and recent funding, shown in billions of Korean won.

Run by Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups, which oversees small and medium-sized enterprises, DCP is designed to back high-risk, high-reward R&D alongside private capital.

BasgenBio said the government R&D portion can run up to 3.6 billion won (about $2.4 million) over three years per project, and that the overall package could reach up to 10 billion won when follow-on private investment, including equity financing, is included.

BasgenBio is pitching the work as a Korea-first effort to use biobank-derived multi-omics clinical cohort data and digital-twin simulations in an AI drug discovery workflow.

BasgenBio CEO Kim Ho (Credit: BasgenBio)

The company said it plans to mine large-scale clinical and omics datasets for drug targets and candidate compounds, then use simulation to prioritize which candidates to push forward.

The DCP selection adds to a string of government-backed wins BasgenBio has highlighted this year.

The company said it was also selected as the lead organization for the Ministry of Science and ICT’s 2025 “R&D Special Zone” program to commercialize what it described as Korea’s first “clinical twin” platform for clinical trial simulation, supported by about 4.6 billion won over three years and built on access to a 156,000-person biobank and a 500,000-person multi-ethnic multi-omics database.

BasgenBio also said it was selected for the government’s DIPS 1000+ initiative, which offers up to 1.1 billion won over three years through commercialization and R&D support, and that it has closed a 3.0 billion won financing with CKC Venture Capital, Pathfinder H and HLB bioStep participating.

The company said it plans to use the DCP backing to further build out a hair-loss drug development model that pairs AI-driven discovery with digital-twin-based validation while expanding its academic collaboration network.