HitGen Ltd., a privately held biotech company focused on technology for effective and efficient small molecule drug discovery and development, announced today a collaboration with The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and its affiliate, the California Institute for Biomedical Research (Calibr). This collaboration is to discover and develop potential new therapies in areas of unmet clinical need, with an initial focus in oncology, regenerative medicine and virology.

HitGen’s technology platform, centered around the design, synthesis, and interrogation of multi‐billion component libraries of DNA encoded small molecules, will be deployed to identify new small molecule leads for therapeutic targets identified by the collaboration. Leaders in basic and translational research at TSRI and Calibr will provide target materials and relevant know‐how to prosecute drug targets of interest. The parties will contribute in‐kind to the discovery efforts and anticipate progressing any drug candidates that emerge to clinical proof‐of‐concept studies.

"We are delighted to partner with HitGen to further the combined TSRI‐Calibr mission to create new medicines for unmet needs. HitGen’s commitment to developing and deploying DEL technology is a great fit for our new model for translational research in the non‐profit sector," commented Peter Schultz, President and Professor of Chemistry at TSRI, and CEO of Calibr.

"We are excited to collaborate with Prof. Schultz and his colleagues at TSRI‐Calibr as a strategic partner for these discovery efforts, and we acknowledge the fundamental contributions of TSRI Professors Sydney Brenner and Richard Lerner in initiating the field of DNA‐encoded chemistry technology" said Dr. Jin Li, Chairman & CEO of HitGen Ltd. He added that "HitGen continues to grow as a world‐class drug discovery organization. We are keenly focused on engaging with world‐leading academic institutions to provide new solutions for unmet medical need."

About HitGen Ltd

HitGen is an innovation driven life‐sciences company based in Chengdu, China and Houston, Texas, USA. HitGen has established a rigorous platform for early‐stage drug discovery. Our DNA encoded libraries currently contain over 25 billion diverse drug‐like small molecules. The library is assembled with robust chemistries, and is populated with many hundreds of distinct chemical scaffolds. These libraries have been validated by yielding tractable lead series against targets from known and novel protein classes.