HTG Molecular announces first quarter milestone achievements for drug discovery

HTG Molecular Diagnostics announced the achievement of three significant drug discovery business milestones in the first quarter of 2023. As reported in January 2023, HTG filed a patent application on December 28, 2022, which included claims directed toward specific compounds, pharmaceutical compositions and methods of treating or preventing disease by administration of the compounds for its first target and indication. That work has now been followed up with the first of the key first quarter 2023 milestones – in vitro demonstration of efficacy of the lead compounds both as a standalone therapy and in combination with the current standard of care. HTG considers this result a powerful demonstration of its medicinal chemistry platform. The second key milestone achieved during the first quarter was the use of the company’s proprietary HTG EdgeSeq RNA profiling platform to biologically interrogate the lead molecules. This data, along with other primary and secondary data, was then introduced into the company’s AI-driven drug discovery engine, resulting in the creation of a second generation of molecules. The second generation of molecules have been subjected to the same in vitro experiments as the first, demonstrating improved efficacy over the first generation of molecules. The third milestone achieved was the use of our AI-driven drug discovery engine to design compounds using transcriptomic data as the starting point. These system-designed compounds showed highly similar characteristics to our lead compounds that were designed starting with the target.