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 for small molecules and nucleic acid drug 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 before the end of 2020, 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.

Meanwhile, HitGen has built an integrated RNA therapeutics R&D platform including experienced teams, research labs and technologies covering several key fields such as bioinformatics, organic chemistry and medicinal chemistry，RNA biology, molecular biology and cell biology, translational research and clinical research. The platform not only provides high quality services to support internal and external RNA therapeutics R&D projects, but also carries out siRNA sequence design, siRNA parallel synthesis and chemical modification/conjugation, mRNA and protein knock-down assays in both engineered cell lines and primary cell lines, stability test, off-target assessment, bio-distribution and other relate in vitro/in vivo assays for activity and toxicity study, etc. HitGen has also established its own pipelines in early stages to discover novel RNA therapeutics, aiming for providing new treatment for unmet medical needs in oncology and immunology.

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.