HitGen and UPPTHERA Enter Into Drug Discovery Research Collaboration

CHENGDU, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HitGen (688222.SH) today announced that it has entered into a drug discovery research collaboration with UPPTHERA Inc. to identify small molecule Hits against previous known-to-be undruggable targets and novel E3 ligase. HitGen will apply its platform technology, based on the design, synthesis and screening of DNA-encoded libraries (DEL) to discover compounds that bind to certain targets. The identified compounds will be exclusively licensed to UPPTHERA for further development. Under the terms of the agreement, HitGen will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, success fee, license/milestone fee from UPPTHERA.

“We are delighted to enter this collaboration with UPPTHERA, an emerging pharmaceutical venture company aiming for new drug development based on targeted protein degradation (TPD) technology. We look forward to working closely with UPPTHERA’s research teams to deliver novel small molecules to their programs, ” said Dr. Jin Li, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of HitGen.

“HitGen’s DEL screening platform offers tremendous potential to identify a small molecule binder to UPPTHERA’s targets of interest”, said Dr. Siwoo Choi, Chief Executive Officer of UPPTHERA. “Our alliance enables us to discover and develop pipeline of novel therapeutics for diseases which traditional drugs have failed in the past.”

About UPPTHERA Inc.

UPPTHERA is a pharmaceutical venture company headquartered in Songdo, South Korea. UPPTHERA aims to use Proteolysis Targeting Chimera (PROTAC) modality to solve unmet needs which have not been solved by traditional drug modalities. UPPTHERA’s pipeline is initially focused on, lung cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and hematologic cancers. UPPTHERA also uses its proprietary E3 ligase platform to design PROTAC molecules to degrade the disease-causing proteins on the ER membrane.

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About HitGen Inc.

HitGen Inc. is a rapidly developing biotech company headquartered in Chengdu, China, with subsidiaries in Cambridge, UK and Houston, USA. It became a publicly listed company in Shanghai Stock Exchange in April 2020 (ticker code 688222.SH). HitGen has established a drug discovery research platform centered on the design, synthesis and screening of DNA encoded chemical libraries (DELs), fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) and structure-based drug design (SBDD) technologies. HitGen's DELs currently contains more than 1 trillion novel, diverse, drug-like small molecules and macrocyclic compounds. These compounds are members of DELs synthesized from many hundreds of distinct chemical scaffolds, designed with tractable chemistry, and have yielded proven results for the discovery of small molecule leads against precedented and unprecedented classes of biological targets.

Through its acquisition of Cambridge UK based Vernalis R&D Ltd, a leader in FBDD/SBDD, HitGen now has a research team of over 500 scientists and offers a full set of research capabilities from recombinant protein expression and purification, structural biology, assay development, screening, DEL 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 single 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.), DEL screening, DEL design, synthesis and characterization, integrated drug discovery projects, risk sharing projects, collaborative ventures to program out-licensing. HitGen has approximately 20 in-house drug discovery programs at different stages of research & development. HitGen is collaborating with pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical companies, foundations and research institutes in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia to enable the discovery and development of novel medicines and agrochemicals.

For more information, please call [phone], [phone] or visit www.hitgen.com.
For media inquiries: [e-mail]
For investor inquiries: [e-mail]
For business development: [e-mail]