Chinese firm HitGen has 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 programmes, ” said Dr Jin Li, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, 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, UPPTHERA. “Our alliance enables us to discover and develop pipeline of novel therapeutics for diseases which traditional drugs have failed in the past.”