CR UK, HitGen work together on new lung cancer medicines

Cancer Research UK, its commercial arm Cancer Research Technology (CRT) and private biotech HitGen have entered into a licence agreement to develop a novel class of drugs against lung cancer.

Scientists at the charity's Drug Discovery Unit at The University of Manchester will work on new leads against a therapeutic target in lung cancer that were identified using HitGen's leading technology platform, which screens vast DNA encoded libraries containing many hundreds of millions of small molecules with drug-like properties synthesised on chemically diverse scaffolds.

The parties note that this is the first license taken through the ongoing collaboration between CRT, Cancer Research UK's Manchester Institute Drug Discovery Group and HitGen, with the latter eligible for milestone payments as the project progresses.

"As part of the Cancer Research UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, we're determined to get new lung cancer treatments to patients quicker. Identifying this promising candidate drug offers the potential to help boost survival from this devastating disease," said Dr Donald Ogilvie, head of drug discovery at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute at The University of Manchester.

Further specifics weren't revealed at this time.