HitGen and Arclight Announce DEL and TPD Collaboration in CNS Drug Discovery Release Time：2022-05-13

CHENGDU, China, May 13, 2022 – HitGen Inc. (“HitGen”), a Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR-listed company, and Arclight Inc. (“Arclight”), an early stage biotech company focused on innovative approaches to solving the challenges of neurodegenerative disease drug discovery and company creation, today announced a five-year strategic collaborative research and license agreement. The strategic collaboration will focus on discovery and development of innovative drugs in the central nervous system (CNS) therapeutic area using HitGen's DNA-encoded libraries (DEL) and Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) platforms.

Drug discovery for CNS disorders, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, remains a great challenge, as the most genetically validated CNS-related targets are hard to drug and the blood-brain barrier presents significant challenges for the delivery into the brain. To address these challenges, the strategic collaboration will bring together Arclight’s expertise in CNS drug discovery with HitGen’s world-leading hit discovery platforms and expertise with new drug modalities.  HitGen’s DEL technology platform will be deployed to identify hits for challenging targets relevant to CNS disorders including aggregation proteins, membrane-bound proteins, and CNS-specific E3 ligases. In addition, HitGen’s TPD platform will be utilized for protein degrader design, synthesis, profiling, and in vivo evaluation. The joint efforts will be pursuant to the drug discovery process starting from target nomination to later-stages of drug discovery.

Dr. Steven Tregay, President and Chief Executive Officer of Arclight, said: “HitGen is a world leader in the DEL space and Arclight and its portfolio companies will benefit from this strategic partnership in the identification of starting material for our TPD and non-TPD programs. This partnership between Arclight and HitGen will be an instrumental relationship that will bring CNS therapies one step closer to patients around the world.”

Dr. Jin Li, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of HitGen, said: “Arclight is a highly innovative biotech company with in-depth expertise in the CNS therapeutic area. We are delighted to announce the collaboration with them to conquer challenging diseases. As an efficient ‘engine’ to drive drug discovery, HitGen’s DEL and TPD platforms are strongly capable of identifying 'seeds' for new drug development, to address the unmet medical needs and contribute to better human health and life. We look forward to promising results from our collaboration heading to effective medicine for CNS disorders.”

With an aim to build a world-class innovative biopharmaceutical company, HitGen focuses on the discovery and optimization of small molecule and RNA new drugs, and builds four core technology platforms including DNA-encoded library (DEL), molecular fragment and structure design (FBDD/SBDD), synthetic therapeutic oligonucleotide (STO) and targeted protein degradation (TPD). The DEL technology platform, centered around the design, synthesis and interrogation of over one trillion component libraries of DNA-encoded small molecules, is capable of providing services and products including DEL screening, customized DEL library, OpenDEL^® etc.

About Arclight Inc.

Arclight Inc. is the drug discovery engine of Arclight Therapeutics LLC. based in Cambridge, MA, USA.  Arclight Therapeutics LLC is building a pipeline of early-stage companies focused on the development of novel therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. Arclight Therapeutics LLC’s hub and spoke R&D model enables rapid value creation by providing expertise, access to R&D resources, and operational support during the early stages of company creation. By engaging with the brightest minds in neurodegenerative disease research, Arclight is building companies with the right team, around the right idea, using the right resources and capabilities.

About HitGen Inc.

HitGen Inc. (SSE: 688222.SH), founded in 2012, is headquartered in Chengdu, China, with subsidiaries in Cambridge, UK and Houston, USA. HitGen is committed to building a world-class innovative biopharmaceutical enterprise and contributing to the better life and health of mankind. Engaged in the discovery and optimization of small molecules and nucleic acid drugs, HitGen dedicates itself to cultivating an internationally leading drug discovery and optimization system centered on four key technology platforms, including DNA-encoded library technology (including DEL design, synthesis and screening, and application expansion), fragment-based drug discovery and structure-based drug design technologies (FBDD/SBDD), synthetic therapeutic oligonucleotide technology (STO), and targeted protein degradation technology (TPD). It provides new molecular entities (NMEs) at different stages of research and development for the pharmaceutical industry, through its diversified business models including research and development services, out-licensing of projects at different R&D stages, and new drug launches in the long term, with an aim to address unmet clinical needs with innovative therapeutic solutions. As a leader in the field of DEL technology, HitGen has been committed to the development, application and upgrade of DEL technology since its establishment. By the end of 2021, HitGen's DELs contains more than 1.2 trillion novel, diverse, drug-like small molecules and macrocyclic compounds. These compounds are members of DELs synthesized from many thousands 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. HitGen is in collaboration with pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical companies, foundations and research institutes in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania.

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