Coverage

PHARMA BOARDROOM Dr Jin Li explains Chinese firm HitGen’s unique drug discovery technology platform, how its ability to screen billions of molecules has the potential to significantly increase success rates in early drug discovery, and the next steps for the company’s expansion. "By now, we have a platform of over 500 billion small molecules, and in terms of published numbers, we probably have the largest DEL collections in the world. By the end of this year, we hope to have built a DEL of over one trillion small molecules!"

China Daily, Yuan Shenggao 2020-05-07 HitGen, a local biopharmaceutical company, was listed on the science and technology innovation board at the Shanghai Stock Exchange in mid-April, and is the first company in southwestern China to appear on the board. The company, founded in 2012, provides research services for the early stages of drug discovery using its core DNA encoded compound library technology. It has established partnerships with multinational drug and biomedicine companies such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, MSD and Sanofi. Li Jin, chairman and general manager of HitGen, said it will expand investment into DNA encoded compound library technology and business, to promote research and development of drugs.

CGTN, By Wei Lynn Tang HitGen Inc., a Chengdu-based biotechnology company that has listed on China's Science and Technology Innovation Board on April 16, raising some 118 million U.S. dollars. According to the company's listing prospectus, 75 percent of its listing net proceeds will be used for a new molecular design, construction, and application platform construction project, with the remaining funds for a new drugs research and development project. According to the company's listing prospectus, 75 percent of its listing net proceeds will be used for a new molecular design, construction, and application platform construction project, with the remaining funds for a new drugs research and development project. Li Jin, chairman and CEO of HitGen, said the company's top priority is to continue to invest in its core technology – the DEL technology – to make progress in its drug discovery programs.

CGTN, By Wei Lynn Tang 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.