Compugen Names Lead Therapeutic Candidate For CGEN-15029 Immuno-Oncology Program IND filing For COM701 Anticipated in 2017

Compugen Ltd. CGEN announced disclosed COM701 as the lead monoclonal antibody therapeutic candidate for its CGEN-15029 target program. The company made the announcement at the JMP Securities Life Science Conference in New York.

Compugen said this antibody candidate is now undergoing preclinical development activities in preparation for advancement to clinical studies, with an anticipated IND filing in the year 2017. According to the company, CGEN-15029 is one of multiple novel immune checkpoint targets discovered by it through the use of its unique in silico predictive discovery infrastructure.

The company's President and CEO, Anat Cohen-Dayag, explained, "Selection of COM701 as our lead clinical candidate marks a new phase for Compugen, where we not only discover novel targets for immuno-oncology, but are now positioned to advance our discoveries into preclinical and clinical development on our own. The rapid progress of the CGEN-15029 program, with extremely aggressive timelines from target discovery and validation to therapeutic antibody development, was made possible in large part by the identification of CGEN-15029's binding partner and the expansion of the Company's immuno-oncology R&D infrastructure."

He added, "In parallel to the CGEN-15029 program, Compugen is using this infrastructure to pursue additional novel immuno-oncology programs and is now positioned to advance them. In addition to the information disclosed today, the Company intends to share further data with respect to the CGEN-15029 program and the status of its Pipeline Program in the coming months."

Compugen said COM701 was selected from among multiple candidate antibodies for CGEN-15029 that were generated through various antibody discovery technologies and screened at Compugen USA, Inc., its wholly-owned subsidiary in South San Francisco. The company believed that this effort resulted in a collection of high affinity antibodies with the ability to block CGEN-15029 from binding to its ligand, and which demonstrated activation of T cells in functional studies.