CHENGDU, China, March 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Shanghai-listed company (688222.SH) HitGen Inc. (“HitGen”) announced today that it has entered into a research collaboration agreement with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (“HHMI”) and duke university. HHMI Principal Investigators and duke university who will oversee the collaboration will be Dr. Robert J. LefkowitzJames B. Duke Professor of Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry at the duke university Medical Center, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher and 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient, and Dr. Howard A. RockmanEdward S. Orgain Professor Emeritus of Cardiology and Professor of Medicine and Cell Biology at duke university Medical Center. HHMIs and duke university will use OpenDEL from HitGen^® to make selections against GPCR targets. OpenDEL^® is an affordable self-service drug discovery LED platform for start-ups, biotechs and academic researchers.

“We look forward to working with the Lefkowitz-Rockman team at HHMI and duke university and I believe this collaboration reinforces the role of the HitGen platform as a leader in the rapidly developing field of DNA-encoded chemistry,” said Dr. Jin LiChairman and CEO of HitGen Inc.

HitGen is a world leader in the development of LED technology and applications for early-stage small molecule drug discovery. HitGen’s comprehensive LED product line and efficient selection process have enabled HitGen to enable drug discovery projects for many organizations around the world.

About OpenDEL^®

OpenDEL^® is a self-service LED product that provides researchers in industry and academia with direct access to billions of DNA-encoded compounds for their own target selections without having to disclose target information (https://www.hitgen.com/en/capabilities-details-21.html). Once the order form is placed, HitGen will share detailed LED data with customers, including building block information and DNA tagging. Thanks to the transparency of the product, there are no financial obligations downstream, if users find interesting compounds from OpenDEL^®. OpenDEL^® provides affordable LED resources for start-ups, biotechs, academic researchers, and AI-ML companies.

About HitGen Inc.

HitGen Inc. is a biotechnology company headquartered in Chengdu, Chinawith subsidiaries in Cambridge, United Kingdom and Houston, United States. HitGen became a listed company on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in April 2020 (ticker 688222.SH) and established a drug discovery research platform for small molecules and nucleic acid-based drugs focused on the design, synthesis and screening of encoded chemical libraries by DNA (DEL), fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) and structure-based drug design (SBDD) technologies. HitGen’s LEDs currently contain over 1 trillion new, diverse, drug-like small molecules and macrocyclic compounds. These compounds are members of DELs synthesized from several hundred distinct chemical scaffolds, engineered with treatable chemistry, and have shown proven results for the discovery of small molecule leads against previous and unprecedented classes of biological targets.

Thanks to its acquisition of Cambridge United Kingdom Based at Vernalis R&D Ltd, a leader in the FBDD/SBDD field, HitGen now has a research team of over 500 scientists and offers a comprehensive set of research capabilities that involve recombinant protein expression and purification, structural biology, assay development, screening, LED synthesis, nucleic acid and small molecule chemical synthesis, computational and medicinal chemistry, biochemistry and biophysics, cell biology, in vivo pharmacology, DMPK, CMC, etc., to enable drug discovery research, from target gene to IND filing.

HitGen operates a flexible business model, ranging from a one-time capability-based fee for services (FFS, e.g., protein expression and purification, structural biology, bioinformatics, computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, nucleic and organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, biophysics, PK, PD, etc.), LED screening, LED design, synthesis and characterization, integrated drug discovery projects, risk sharing projects, collaborative projects to program licensing. HitGen has approximately 20 in-house drug discovery programs in various stages of research and development. HitGen collaborates with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and chemical companies, foundations and research institutes in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia to enable the discovery and development of new drugs and agrochemicals.

SOURCEHitGen Inc.