HTG Molecular ‘pleased’ with preliminary interest in drug discovery platform

HTG Molecular Diagnostics provided an update on partnering discussions for its drug discovery business unit. HTG has pioneered a proprietary platform-based approach that is designed to help improve drug discovery, referred to as transcriptome-informed drug discovery and design. At the center of this approach is the application of HTG’s proprietary RNA profiling technologies, functionally married with advanced medicinal chemistry using a novel AI-based platform. This unique drug candidate optimization platform is expected to allow for more biologically-relevant insight into drug candidate selection and design much earlier in the discovery process than in traditional drug discovery. HTG believes this approach will result in higher efficiency, improved risk management and cost efficiencies to bring novel drug candidate molecules from very early discovery through entry to development. "While we are still early in our partnering discussions, we are pleased with the level of preliminary interest in our drug discovery platform from certain pharmaceutical companies that historically in-license candidates for preclinical development as part of their business model," said Stephen A. Barat, Ph.D., SVP of Therapeutics. "We believe this interest is driven by our highly differentiated approach to drug discovery – namely, the use of our proprietary transcriptomic profiling technologies, integrated with a machine learning-based chemical library design platform, to better-inform the design and selection of drug candidate molecules. This approach is expected to yield drug candidates with lower risk profiles and increased opportunities for development success, all while being faster and more cost-efficient than traditional approaches. We look forward to engaging with pharmaceutical companies globally to identify the best partners to carry forward the development of the company’s early portfolio of candidate molecules in oncology and neurodegenerative disease indications, as well as with pharmaceutical companies interested in using HTG’s drug discovery engine with their own targets and libraries."