HitGen Inc. announced today that HitGen and Morphic Therapeutic have extended their drug discovery research collaboration to identify small molecule leads against targets specified by Morphic. HitGen’s industry-leading DNA-encoded library (DEL) technology platform includes over 400 billion encoded syntheses of small molecules with drug-like properties, synthesized on chemically-diverse scaffolds.
The collaboration is an extension of a previous agreement which identified active lead compounds that were exclusively licensed to Morphic.
Under the terms of the extended agreement, HitGen will use its platform technology, based on the design, synthesis and interrogation by selection of DELs to discover ligands for targets of interest to Morphic. Morphic will pay an assignment fee to HitGen in exchange for exclusive development and commercialization rights to compounds that achieve the criteria of the collaboration.
“The HitGen DEL platform provides chemical libraries that are excellent starting points for Morphic to expand the diversity of our compound collection targeting integrin receptors,” commented Bruce Rogers, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Morphic Therapeutic Inc. “We are enthusiastic to expand this collaboration and build upon our previous work together.”
“We are delighted to announce the extension of our collaboration with Morphic Therapeutic. The delivery of compounds under our initial agreement demonstrates the ability of our DEL platform to discover novel small molecule ligands against a variety of technically challenging targets. We look forward to further success in identifying small molecule compounds in our continued collaboration with Morphic,” noted Dr. Jin Li, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of HitGen.