Compugen Ltd. CGEN today disclosed successful experimental data for
CGEN-15027, a Compugen-discovered immune checkpoint target candidate. The
experimental results include its expression in the cancer microenvironment,
both on cancer cells derived from lung, breast, and liver cancer patients, and
on tumor infiltrating immune cells. In addition, the disclosed data
demonstrate CGEN-15027's inhibitory effect on cancer-specific immune cells.
These results suggest that CGEN-15027 has strong potential to serve as a
target for monoclonal antibody (mAb) cancer therapy with a mechanism of action
that is potentially distinct from previously-disclosed Compugen checkpoint
target candidates.
CGEN-15027 is one of eleven novel B7/CD28-like immune checkpoints candidates
discovered to date through the use of Compugen's broadly applicable predictive
discovery infrastructure, and is the sixth of these eleven for which
experimental data has been disclosed demonstrating their potential to serve as
targets for cancer immunotherapy. The different characteristics of each of
Compugen's immune checkpoint candidates suggest that these drug target
candidates may give rise to different first-in-class cancer therapeutics.
Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, Compugen president and CEO, stated, “Six of our eleven
computer-predicted novel immune checkpoint candidates have demonstrated
initial successful biological validation supporting their involvement in tumor
immunology. To our knowledge, this hit rate is unprecedented. Furthermore, the
remaining five are undergoing further validation studies. These results not
only support the strength and breadth of our Pipeline Program, but also attest
to the impressive power and accuracy of our unique predictive discovery
infrastructure.”
Dr. Cohen-Dayag continued, “With respect to CGEN-15027, we are very pleased
with the experimental data now being disclosed, based on which we have
initiated a therapeutic antibody discovery program against this promising
immune checkpoint candidate.”
Initial experiments with CGEN-15027 have demonstrated inhibitory activity in
melanoma-specific human CD8 cytotoxic T cells, which are immune cells that
recognize and destroy cancer cells. Overexpression of CGEN-15027 on these
cells dampened their cancer specific reactivity consistent with a role of an
immune checkpoint. These findings, indicating that CGEN-15027 exerts its
inhibitory effect upon its expression on T cells, support a mechanism of
action that is potentially different from previously disclosed Compugen
checkpoint target candidates. CGEN-15027 was found to be expressed on effector
immune cells within the tumor microenvironment. Expression of CGEN-15027 was
also detected on human effector immune cells, such as NK and T cells, which
play important roles in anti-tumor immunity, further substantiating a role for
CGEN-15027 in tumor immunology. In addition, CGEN-15027 was shown to be
expressed on cancer cells derived from patients with lung, breast, and liver
cancer.
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