HitGen and UPPTHERA Extend PROTAC Research Collaboration after Hit Finding Success on Undruggable Targets

CHENGDU,China,April 6,2022 -- HitGen Inc. ("HitGen"),a Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR-listed company (ticker code 688222.SH),today announced that the company has successfully completed the multiple-target drug discovery research projects withUPPTHERA,a Korean pharmaceutical company aiming for new drug development employing "Protein Degradation Technology". During the collaboration,multiple undisclosed targets were screened against HitGen's proprietary over 1 trillion DNA-encoded libraries (DELs). The majority of the targets have resulted in confirmed hits,which have high potential for PROTAC development. Now the two parties are extending the collaboration on further development of these projects and additional challenging targets.

"I am excited to see the fruitful outcome from our collaboration with UPPTHERA,comprising of highly science-driven and collaboration-focused researchers. As a great tool for Targeted Protein Degrader drug discovery,HitGen's DEL has once again demonstrated its power in tackling challenging targets. I look forward to seeing more promising results from further development of these compounds," said Dr. Jin Li,Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of HitGen.

"HitGen's DEL screening platform properly discovered small molecule binders for UPPTHERA's targets of interest which are known to be undruggable. Through our extended collaboration,we hope to see further development of these molecules and more results for additional challenging targets," said Dr. Siwoo Choi,Chief Executive Officer of UPPTHERA.

About HitGen Inc.

HitGen Inc. is a biotech company headquartered in Chengdu,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 thousands 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.

About UPPTHERA Inc.

UPPTHERA Inc. is a pharmaceutical venture company headquartered in Songdo,South Korea. UPPTHERA aims to use Proteolysis Targeting Chimera (PROTAC) modality to solve unmet needs which have not been solved by traditional drug modalities. UPPTHERA's pipeline is initially focused on,lung cancers,cardiovascular diseases,and hematologic cancers. UPPTHERA also uses UPPGRADER™ which is its proprietary solution to discover promising novel E3L mainly based on a scRNA-seq data analysis to develop novel E3L platforms with definite competitive edges on traditional E3Ls such as CRBN or VHL.

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