HITGEN AND MSD ENTER Research Collaboration

Chengdu, China，22^nd March, 2017, HitGen Ltd announced that the company has entered into a collaboration with MSD, known as Merck in the United States and Canada, to discover novel chemical leads for multiple therapeutic targets of interest to MSD. According to this agreement, HitGen will deploy its core technology platform, based on DNA-encoded library design, synthesis and screening.. The novel leads identified will be licensed exclusively to MSD. Under the terms of the agreement, HitGen will receive an upfront payment and be eligible for milestone payments from MSD.

"We are very pleased to establish this collaboration with MSD, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world. Through this collaboration, we will work closely with MSD scientists to discover novel lead compounds aimed at bringing new medicines to address unmet medical needs," said Dr. Jin Li, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of HitGen. 

"Agreements like this that facilitate the application of potentially enabling new platform technologies are a key element of our collaboration strategy," said Dr. Richard Tillyer, senior vice president, MSD Global Chemistry. "We look forward to working with scientists at HitGen to apply this platform towards the discovery of novel therapeutic candidates."

ENDS

About HitGen Ltd

HitGen is an innovation driven life science company with headquarters and main research facilities based in Chengdu, China and with laboratory in Houston, Texas， USA.  HitGen has established a unique platform for drug discovery research. Our DNA encoded chemical libraries (DELs) contain more than 10 billion novel, diverse, drug-like compounds. These compounds are members of  DELs synthesised from many hundreds of distinct chemical scaffolds, designed with tractable chemistry and proven results for finding drug leads against targets from known and novel protein classes.  HitGen is working with multiple pharmaceutical, biotech companies and research institutes to discover and develop novel therapeutics of the future.