Seeun Park is currently an undergraduate researcher at CCADD. She became an undergraduate student researcher after successfully completing the 2024 Winter Internship program. She is a Bioengineering major at Yonsei University. She was able to gain knowledge and hands-on experience on artificial intelligence for clinical drug development by the project “Improving the Generalizability of Natural Language Process Models to Extract Drug Safety Information from Clinical Notes”. With passion in healthcare and safety, she focuses on exploring clinical pharmacology and regulatory science more specifically Real-World Data (RWD) and policy analysis in Korea. It is her goal to work on expertise for the improvement of disease prevention and control.

This winter, CCADD welcomes six interns - Minsol Kim, Suhyun An, Seo-Yoon Jang, Seeun Park, Yura Choi and Nayoung Ku - for the 2025 Winter Internship Program.

Minsol Kim is majoring in veterinary medicine at Seoul National University. She is interested in exploring the application of domain knowledge in the process of AI model development by utilizing her knowledge of pharmacology, toxicology, and physiology. Her goal is to build a solid foundation in AI and gain hands-on experience analyzing clinical data and investigating the drug development process. Through the 2025 CCADD winter internship program, she aims to explore potential career paths in the field of drug discovery.

Suhyun An is a student majoring in Stem Cell and Regenerative Biotechnology at Konkuk University. She previously worked as an undergraduate researcher in the Immunopharmacology Laboratory at Seoul National University College of Medicine, where she studied drug toxicity. Her current research interests include Drug-Drug Interactions (DDIs) and drug repurposing using artificial intelligence (AI). Her previous training primarily involved wet lab research. The CCADD internship will allow her to gain experience in data science applied to drug development, which will serve as a critical foundation for achieving her future research goals.

Seo-Yoon Jang is majoring in Systems Biotechnology at Chung-Ang University. She has a keen interest in AI and data science, which led her to complete the 2024 Boostcourse <DATA SCIENCE PROJECTS> coaching study program. Subsequently, she developed an interest in drug delivery and interned at the Lab of Drug Delivery and Cell Therapy at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine. Her growing passion for integrating AI into drug development led her to a winter internship at the CCADD. Through this internship, she aims to gain proficiency in data analysis tools and deepen her domain knowledge, with the goal of becoming a researcher specializing in AI-driven drug development.

Seeun Park is a senior at Yonsei University, double majoring in Biotechnology and Public Administration. She is willing to explore clinical pharmacology and regulatory science during this winter internship program. With passion in healthcare and safety, she focuses on gaining more experience and knowledge on artificial intelligence for clinical drug development and more specifically epigenetic study and policy analysis in Korea. It is her goal to work on expertise for the improvement of disease prevention and control.

Yura Choi is an undergraduate student in the Department of Chemistry at Kyung Hee University. She is passionate about AI-driven drug development, applying data science to pharmaceutical research. Through the LAIDD program, she has gained valuable insights into how AI can be applied to drug development. She aims to contribute to drug development and explore innovative therapeutic modalities by leveraging AI-driven data analysis. Currently, she is participating in the CCADD winter internship to strengthen her AI and data science expertise and deepen her understanding of research in drug development.

Nayoung Ku is an undergraduate in life science and AI convergence at Handong Global University. She previously earned a Bachelor’s degree in psychology at the National Institute of Lifelong Education by Examination for Self-Education. Nowadays, Nayoung mainly develops prediction modelling and optimization algorithms with various datasets. She had been a research assistant at Biodata Laboratory, Handong Global University, focusing on cancer diagnostic machine learning models using tumour-educated platelet (TEP) RNA-seq data for a year. Recently, she did a capstone project on NLP for an ovarian cancer diagnostic model using TEP RNA-seq pre-processed data, which showed her creativity in analytic approach. She received the Daewoong Pharmaceutical CEO Award at the JUMP AI 2024 Drug Discovery Competition, sponsored by the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association. In the competition, Nayoung and her team developed an advanced multi- perceptron to predict IC50 values for IRAK4 inhibitors by applying novel and strategic approaches to accelerate drug discovery processes. With her enthusiasm for enhancing the efficiency of drug discovery, she participates in this internship to experience real-world clinical data and its analysis, like electronic medical records. With a heart of admiration, she is yearning to learn the extraordinary methodology of CCADD.

We hope that during their winter internship, they will build confidence in their area of expertise, develop independent learning skills to explore new knowledge, and dedicate their enthusiasm to gaining a comprehensive understanding of drug development and regulatory science throughout these two months.

Prof. Howard Lee spoke at a conference held by The Korean Society of Food, Drug and Cosmetics Regulatory Sciences, December 13, 2024, in the Hoam Faculty Club, Seoul National University. Prof. Lee discussed the current status and future perspectives as to the application of artificial intelligence technologies to clinical drug development. A newspaper article focused on the point that Prof. Lee emphasized at the Q&A session, where Prof. Lee stressed the establishment of the standards in order for AI to be more broadly accepted into the real-world practices of drug development, particularly for the clinical stage including post-marketing approval.

Prof. Howard Lee shared his past experiences and future perspectives on the 14C-based microtracing and macrodosing studies in humans in South Korea as an invited speaker to the 9th East Asia Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Symposium (EAAMS-9), held at KIST, Seoul, South Korea, on November 22-24, 2023. 

Prof. Lee has introduced the concept and utilizes of the 14C-based microtracing and macrodosing study for new drug development since 2024. As of today, Prof. Lee has completed a total of six microtracing/microdosing studies with one being the IND-opening study for the US FDA. In his talk, Prof. Lee shared his experiences in starting a 14C-labelled human study using the microdosing technology in Korea. Additionally, Prof. Lee gave hist perspective as to how this technology can be further utilized to increase the efficiency of clinical drug development.

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to a session at the Spring Conference, 2021, organized and sponsored by The Pharmaceutical Society of Korea, April 22, 2021, held in the K-Hotel, Seoul, Korea. In the session, Prof. Lee introduced the audience to a dimension reduction model that CCADD has developed to make clinical trial feasibility assessments efficient, practical, and realistic. The research project has been supported for three years by the National Research Foundation of Korea, which is expected to end by this year. Based on the positive results of the research, particularly in the area of type II diabetes mellitus, a patent has been filed, and CCADD plans to expand it to other disease areas too. Prof. Lee has emphasized in the session that artificial intelligence technologies can and should be applied to clinical drug development to make it more versatile and agile. His talk was well-received. 

Prof. Howard Lee spoke about the utility of artificial intelligence (AI) in clinical drug development at the KDDW or Korean Digestive Disease Week 2020, organized by the Korean Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, on November 20, 2020, held at the Swiss Grand Hotel Convention Center. The conference was aired online and the program is shown below:

The title of Prof. Lee's presentation was 'Artificial Intelligence in Drug Development: Clinical Pharmacology Perspective', and he talked about the potentials and pitfalls of AI in clinical drug development. In his talk, Prof. Lee emphasized the fact that most of the AI technologies that have been ever adopted in drug development are primarily in the area of drug discovery, whereas the preclinical and clinical developments have not witnessed active adoption of AI technologies although this trend can change all of a sudden. Particularly, Prof. Lee set aside the one-thirds of his presentation as to how CCADD could have developed a series of machine learning models to reduce the dimensionality of eligibility criteria to assess clinical trial feasibility using several feature selection algorithms. Below is the photo of those who have contributed to the work Prof. Lee introduced in his talk at the conference. 

Prof. Howard Lee gave a talk at a pre-meeting workshop for the American College of Clinical Pharmacology Annual Meeting 2020 on September 16, 2020 (US EST). The title of Prof. Lee's presentation was 'Early Phase Clinical Trials in Korea'. In this talk, Prof. Lee explained how and why Korea has become one of the most attractive countries for clinical drug development, particularly during the past two decades. 

Prof. Lee also introduced the audience to some of his previous works in innovative clinical trial methodologies such as the microtracing technology, which he has spearheaded to make a useful clinical drug development tool in Korea. In association with this, Prof. Lee discussed two of his papers, one in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the other Clinical and Translational Science, two reputable journals in clinical pharmacology. 

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to a seminar sponsored by the Samsung Science & Technology Foundation in association with the Future Technology Study Forum, held on August 28 at the SNU Hoam Faculty House, where he summarized the current status and future prospects of treatment and vaccine developments against the COVID-19 pandemic. Prof. Lee further discussed how the pandemic could change the way new drugs are developed in the post-pandemic era, characterized by social distancing and stay-at-home orders, often termed as "Untact".

Prof. Lee forecast the new drug development paradigm will be characterized as remote and virtual, particularly for clinical drug development in that many research activities should be performed off-clinic. "These changes will eventually facilitate and fasten the adoption of new information and communication technologies, for example, remote data entry and life-log data", Prof. Lee emphasized. According to Prof. Lee, urgency cased by the public unprepared-ness such as the COVID-19 pandemic will also encourage researchers to welcome more innovative technologies, one of which is the application of artificial intelligence algorithms to reposition new therapies, which could save tons of R&D time and expenses. 

Jung-Hyun Won, a summer intern at CCADD, has significantly contributed to the final presentation slide deck. Jung-Hyun and Prof. Lee will be writing one or two reviews/commentaries, which could be published in peer-reviewed journals.