LG Chem's 10,000-Child Hormone Study Unveiled

Key Research Findings on Growth Hormone Treatment for Short Stature

LG Chem recently shared significant progress in its research on growth hormone treatment for children with short stature. These findings were presented at the 20th LGS (LG Growth Study) Symposium, which took place in June and was attended by pediatric endocrinology specialists. The symposium focused on the long-term safety of growth hormone treatment over 12 years and its efficacy over four years.

Since 2012, LG Chem has been conducting extensive studies to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of administering growth hormone to South Korean children. This ongoing effort is part of a larger initiative that aims to track the outcomes of growth hormone treatment for children with short stature over an extended period.

Professor Hong Yong-hee from Soonchunhyang University Bucheon Hospital delivered a presentation titled "12th-Year Safety and 4th-Year Efficacy Results of Growth Hormone Treatment." According to Professor Hong, the treatment significantly improved height growth in children with short stature. As the treatment progressed, these children showed a tendency to approach the average height of their peers.

In cases where children had growth hormone deficiency or were born with low birth weight, their standard deviation score—used to measure how far a child's height is from the average—improved from around -2.5 before treatment to -0.9 after 48 months of treatment. A score of 0 indicates that the child's height is equal to the average of their peers. A score below -2 signifies a "growth deficiency state," where the child’s height or weight is significantly below average. The closer the score is to 0, the smaller the difference between the child and their peers.

Children with idiopathic short stature also experienced improvements. Their standard deviation scores decreased from -2.5 to -1.1 after treatment. Idiopathic short stature refers to cases where children grow poorly despite normal growth hormone levels, placing them among the three shortest out of 100 peers of the same age without a known cause.

This research is part of a long-term project that aims to enroll 10,000 children with short stature by 2027 and monitor the safety and efficacy of growth hormone treatment until 2035. By the end of last year, more than 7,000 participants had already joined the study.

Son Ji-woong, Head of LG Chem's Life Sciences Division, emphasized the importance of the LGS study in building South Korea’s first and largest-scale database for growth hormone treatment. He stated that the company will continue to support research on short stature and provide optimal treatment solutions.

Advancements in AI for Predicting Growth Outcomes

LG Chem has also developed an AI model designed to predict how much children will grow in height after receiving growth hormone treatment. This model combines and recombines multiple existing deep learning models to create an ensemble AI system. It was trained using data from 3,045 children with short stature, enhancing its predictive accuracy.

The AI model was tested on 550 patients, evaluating predictions for the first to third years of treatment. The results showed that the AI model outperformed traditional statistical models. Notably, it could predict one-year growth using only initial diagnostic measurements such as height, weight, and prescribed growth hormone dosage, with an average error of approximately 1.95 cm.

This research was led by Professor Shim Young-seok from Ajou University Hospital and Jeong Ji-yeon, head of LG Chem's DX Team. The findings were also presented as a poster at the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and European Endocrinology Society Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, last May.

Professor Shim highlighted the value of the large-scale treatment data collected through LG Chem's long-term safety study of growth hormones. He noted that this data enabled the development of an advanced AI model for predicting height growth.