About the Authors

Sunghwan Kim

Contributed equally to this work with: Sunghwan Kim, Younho Lee, Jun Woo Kim, Young-Jin Son

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft

Affiliations New Drug Development Center, Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, Daegu, South Korea, R&D center, Polus Inc., 32 Songdogwahak-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, South Korea

Younho Lee

Contributed equally to this work with: Sunghwan Kim, Younho Lee, Jun Woo Kim, Young-Jin Son

Roles Investigation, Writing – original draft

Affiliation College of Pharmacy and Yonsei Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Yonsei University, 85 Songdogwahak-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, South Korea

Jun Woo Kim

Contributed equally to this work with: Sunghwan Kim, Younho Lee, Jun Woo Kim, Young-Jin Son

Roles Investigation, Writing – original draft

Affiliation New Drug Development Center, Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, Daegu, South Korea

Young-Jin Son

Contributed equally to this work with: Sunghwan Kim, Younho Lee, Jun Woo Kim, Young-Jin Son

Roles Investigation, Writing – original draft

Affiliations New Drug Development Center, Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, Daegu, South Korea, Department of New Drug Discovery, Samhyun Inc., Daegu, South Korea

Min Jung Ma

Roles Investigation

Affiliation New Drug Development Center, Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, Daegu, South Korea

Jee-Hyun Um

Roles Formal analysis

Affiliation Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, Dong-A University, Busan, South Korea

Nam Doo Kim

Roles Data curation

Affiliation New Drug Development Center, Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, Daegu, South Korea

Sang Hyun Min

Roles Data curation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation New Drug Development Center, Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, Daegu, South Korea

Dong Il Kim

Roles Supervision

Affiliation Department of Biological Engineering, Inha University, Incheon, South Korea

Brian B. Kim

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

bkim@encuragen.com

Affiliation R&D center, EncuraGen Inc, Anyang, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Competing Interests

B.B.K. is a salaried employee of EncuraGen, S.K. is a salaried employee of Polus Inc., and Y.J.S. is a salaried employee of Samhyun Inc. With regards to the patent related to the submission, there is a registered patent in Korea. The patent number is 10-1838622 and the title is Agonist Peptide for Adiponectin Receptor. Also, a PCT application was filed as of April 10, 2017 and the application number is 10-2017-0037762. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.