China-based drug discovery research company HitGen has entered into a research collaboration with the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), a UK-based not-for-profit organisation focused on the discovery of new drugs.

Under the collaboration, HitGen will leverage its DNA-encoded library (DEL) technology platform, including the OpenDEL solution, to screen marginalised targets selected by SGC.

The screening datasets, curated in an ML-ready format, will be publicly posted to facilitate drug discovery and help global ML experts model the data.

The datasets also help the experts make predictions about new active molecules that would be experimentally tested at SGC, under the Target 2035 initiative.

HitGen chief executive officer and board chairman Jin Li said: “We look forward to working with the research teams at SGC to generate novel starting points for under-studied proteins and to place ML-ready representations of the data into the public domain on an open-access basis.

“As one of HitGen’s four core technology platforms, our world-leading DEL platform is an efficient ‘engine’ to advance drug discovery and has enabled hit identification and lead generation for many innovative discovery programs by our customers and partners.”

SGC chief executive Aled Edwards said: “We look forward to providing the ML community with high-quality, well-curated data so they can contribute to our global effort to find drug starting points for all human proteins.”

HitGen is a drug discovery research company engaged in the development of DEL technology and its applications to early-stage small molecule drug discovery.

The platform includes more than 1.2 trillion small molecules generated by the DEL technology.

OpenDEL is a self-service DEL kit with more than three billion compounds, that enables users to explore DEL selection campaigns without revealing the target identity.

Through the guidance manual and operating instructions, users can leverage OpenDEL to conduct affinity screening experiments against protein targets in their own laboratories.

In addition to DEL, HitGen develops fragment-based drug discovery and structure-based drug design technologies (FBDD/SBDD), and technology platforms for synthetic therapeutic oligonucleotide technology (STO), and targeted protein degradation technology (TPD).