Compugen Discloses Successful Validation Results For Novel B7/CD28–like Cancer Immunotherapy Target Candidate

Compugen Ltd.

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.