HOLON, Israel, December 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN), a leading predictive drug
discovery company, announced today the following key highlights
from its R&D Day that took place this morning in NYC:
- Disclosure of a therapeutic antibody program targeting TIGIT to
complement the Company's CGEN-15029 program, following new data
recently generated for the CGEN-15029/PVRIG program. TIGIT and
PVRIG represent two distinct arms of the same biological pathway.
Based on this and experimental data, the Company believes there is
significant added value to developing both arms as a potential
combination therapy. Compugen expects to select the lead antibody
for CGEN-15137/TIGIT by end of Q1 2017.
- COM701, clinical candidate antibody targeting CGEN-15029/PVRIG,
is currently undergoing process development as part of the
manufacturing activities to generate clinical material. IND-filing
for COM701 is anticipated in Q4 2017.
- Update on status of cancer immunotherapy partnership with Bayer
entered in August 2013. As previously
disclosed, after achieving all preclinical stage milestones for
CGEN-15001T immune checkpoint, this program was transferred to
Bayer for further development. To date, preclinical activities are
on track, and pivotal toxicity studies and GMP clinical trial
material production are ongoing. As previously disclosed, the
second program under the partnership, CGEN-15022, is at an earlier
stage and further characterization studies of its role in
anti-cancer immune responses are ongoing.
- Disclosure of a new therapeutic program focusing on a protein
target expressed in various cancers, and which is highly correlated
with an M2 macrophages marker. The target was also shown to inhibit
T cell activation in cell-based studies. Macrophages are immune
cells that are highly immune suppressive in the tumor
microenvironment, and targeting such cells offers the potential for
efficacy in patients non-responsive to checkpoint inhibitors.
Therapeutic antibody discovery activities have been initiated for
this program.
- Overview of the Company's immuno-oncology target validation
pipeline activities, which primarily focus on myeloid targets. With
an aim to complement and expand the patient population responsive
to checkpoints inhibitors, blocking myeloid targets may serve as
the next wave of cancer immunotherapies. Myeloid CGEN-target
candidates have been identified within the tumor microenvironment
of multiple cancers and are aggressively pursued by the Company and
in collaboration with Prof. Drew
Pardoll.
- The event also featured a presentation by Prof. Drew Pardoll, Chairman of Compugen's Scientific
Advisory Board and Abeloff Professor of Oncology, Medicine,
Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, and Director
of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the
Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns
Hopkins. The presentation included an overview of the immune
checkpoint inhibition landscape, including both T cells and myeloid
cells. Prof. Pardoll further presented in vitro and in
vivo data demonstrating the importance of PVRIG/CGEN-15029 as a
significant T cell immune checkpoint as well as evidences that
PVRIG-blockage synergizes with PD1/PDL1 in unleashing T cell
activity.
About Compugen
Compugen is a leading therapeutic discovery company utilizing
its broadly applicable predictive discovery infrastructure to
identify novel drug targets and develop first-in-class biologics.
The primary focus of the Company's current pipeline is on immune
checkpoint target candidates discovered by the Company, potentially
providing the basis for a next wave of therapeutics for cancer
immunotherapy. Compugen's business model is based on selectively
entering into collaborations for its novel target candidates and
drug product candidates at various stages of research and
development under revenue-sharing agreements. The Company is
headquartered in Israel, with
R&D facilities in Israel and
South San Francisco. At the US facilities, monoclonal antibody
therapeutic candidates are discovered and developed against the
Company's novel target candidates. For additional information,
please visit Compugen's corporate website at
http://www.cgen.com.
Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within
the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of
terminology such as "will," "may," "expects," "anticipates,"
"believes," and "intends," and describe opinions about future
events, and include statements relating to the potential of the
CGEN-15029 program for the development of new cancer immunotherapy
treatments, including the potential of COM701 alone or combined
with anti-CGEN-15137 antibody as a new cancer immunotherapy
treatment. These forward-looking statements involve known and
unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results,
performance or achievements of Compugen to be materially different
from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or
implied by such forward-looking statements. Among these risks:
Compugen's business model is substantially dependent on entering
into collaboration agreements with third parties, and Compugen may
not be successful in generating adequate revenues or
commercializing aspects of its business model. Moreover, the
development and commercialization of therapeutic candidates involve
many inherent risks, including failure to progress to clinical
trials or, if they progress to or enter clinical trials, failure to
receive regulatory approval. These and other factors are more fully
discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of Compugen's most recent
Annual Report on Form 20-F as filed with the Securities and
Exchange Commission as well as other documents that may be
subsequently filed by Compugen from time to time with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any
forward-looking statements represent Compugen's views only as of
the date of this release and should not be relied upon as
representing its views as of any subsequent date. Compugen does not
assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements
unless required by law.
Company contact:
Tsipi Haitovsky
Global Media Liaison
Compugen Ltd.
Email: tsipih@cgen.com
Tel: +972-52-598-9892
SOURCE Compugen Ltd.