New Jersey | July 10 2026
HEC Pharm has formally entered into an agreement with Accutar, a leading global AI-enabled drug discovery company, to form a new company (“NewCo”) and jointly develop an innovative drug pipeline based on Regulated Induced Proximity Targeting Chimera (RIPTAC) technology. The pipeline’s lead indication will be metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), a disease area with substantial unmet medical need worldwide, limited effective treatment options, and a clear need for new medicines that can improve patients’ treatment experience. This collaboration represents a pivotal step in HEC’s strategy to build globally competitive target and technology platforms and marks its deeper entry into a key field of next-generation precision therapeutics.
Addressing a Multibillion-Dollar mCRPC Market and Significant Unmet Clinical Need
HEC and Accutar will jointly focus on the rapidly growing, underserved market for mCRPC therapeutics. According to forecasts cited from Data Bridge Market Research and Japan-based Global Information, Inc., the global mCRPC treatment market was approximately US$12 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach US$30 billion by 2034. China’s market was close to 10 billion RMB in 2024. As population aging accelerates and the incidence of prostate cancer continues to rise, the number of cases is expected to double over the next 10 years, driving sustained growth in treatment demand.
Patients with late-line mCRPC often face treatment failure after novel hormonal therapies and chemotherapy. Available options include androgen receptor pathway inhibitors (ARPIs), taxane-based chemotherapy, poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors, and prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted radioligand therapy; however, median progression-free survival and overall survival remain suboptimal. The pipeline’s lead indication is specifically positioned for late-line mCRPC treatment. In addition to potentially addressing an important therapeutic gap and becoming a blockbuster medicine, the program may have broad potential to move into earlier lines of therapy and combination regimens, benefiting a wider global population of patients with mCRPC.
Securing an Early Position in the RIPTAC Technology Platform and Building a Differentiated Competitive Advantage
RIPTAC is a novel heterobifunctional small-molecule therapeutic strategy. One end of the molecule binds a tumor-specific target protein, while the other binds a protein essential for cell survival, thereby enabling efficient and selective killing of tumor cells. Compared with proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs), RIPTACs inherently avoid resistance arising from E3 ligase mutations and do not require the target protein to be an oncogenic driver or to retain functional activity. Compared with antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), RIPTACs offer similar tumor selectivity while being more amenable to oral administration, providing stronger tissue penetration and lower manufacturing costs, and are therefore better suited to long-term dosing in solid tumors.
At present, Halda Therapeutics in the United States is the only biotechnology company worldwide with core RIPTAC technology that has advanced a program into clinical development. Johnson & Johnson established a position in RIPTAC technology through its acquisition of Halda in 2025. Accutar’s RIPTAC pipeline is among the most advanced and its platform has expansion potential across multiple solid tumors. By entering the field through this collaboration, HEC can avoid crowded and increasingly undifferentiated competition in areas such as PD-1 inhibitors and ADCs while securing an early-mover advantage in next-generation precision therapeutics.
Strategically Complementary Capabilities Integrate AI Drug Design with Development and Commercialization
The parties bring highly complementary capabilities, creating an end-to-end closed loop from AI-enabled early-stage research and molecular design through development and commercialization.
Founded in 2015, Accutar is a leading U.S. AI-enabled drug discovery company that has established a closed-loop integration of in silico (“dry-lab”) drug design and experimental (“wet-lab”) validation in early discovery. Its drug discovery models deeply integrate physics-based modeling, machine learning, and language-based models. To support program advancement in line with established drug development practices and regulatory requirements, Accutar has also built multiple AI platforms, including literature-search and patent-search engines, to improve the efficiency of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submissions. Four of the company’s programs have received FDA clearance to enter clinical trials, and its early-discovery capabilities have also been recognized through engagements with multiple pharmaceutical companies and lead VCs.
Accutar’s founder, Dr. Jie Fan, trained under Professor Nikola Pavletich, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and conducted postdoctoral research with Nobel laureate Dr. Günter Blobel. The team combines world-class expertise in structural biology and computational biology, has deep technical capabilities in induced proximity, and is one of the very few teams worldwide capable of advancing RIPTAC technology into the clinics.
HEC, meanwhile, brings more than 20 years of clinical experience in China and a systematic clinical management framework, together with group-wide, internationally compliant chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) capabilities, experience with parallel China-U.S. regulatory submissions, and pharmaceutical commercialization capabilities. These strengths will provide robust support for the clinical development and future commercialization of the RIPTAC pipeline.
Together, the parties will tightly integrate “AI-driven precision chimeric molecule design” with “end-to-end clinical to commercial translation,” from target discovery to clinical advancement and from molecular optimization to global registration. This will create a faster path for innovative therapies from the laboratory to patients and substantially accelerate the development of new medicines that can benefit patients.
