Compugen Announces US Patent Allowance for Drug Candidate Recently Presented at 2013 American Thoracic Society Meeting

Compugen Ltd.

announced today that the company has received an Issue Notification from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a patent application covering the company's drug candidate CGEN-25009. CGEN-25009 is intended for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a devastating disease with no current effective treatment. This novel peptide agonist of the relaxin receptor was the subject of a recent presentation by Dr. Daniel Kass, from the University of Pittsburgh (“Pitt”), at the 2013 American Thoracic Society Conference. In his presentation, Dr. Kass, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Pitt and Assistant Director for Novel Therapeutics and Translational Research at The Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Center for Interstitial Lung Disease at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, presented experimental data demonstrating that CGEN-25009 protects mice from bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis. In this model, CGEN-25009 treatment reduced lung fibrosis as determined by collagen deposition in both preventive and therapeutic administration regimens. As previously announced by Compugen, the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation provided a grant to scientists at Pitt to independently evaluate the therapeutic potential of CGEN-25009 for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a life-threatening disease affecting an estimated more than five million people worldwide. Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, president and CEO of Compugen, stated, “We are very pleased with the CGEN-25009 results presented by Dr. Kass, and we hope that this therapeutic peptide candidate will eventually improve the lives of many patients.” Dr. Cohen-Dayag added, “The new US patent, which will be issued on July 23, 2013 as US Patent No. 8,492,329, as well as previous patents granted or allowed for CGEN-25009 in the European Union and Australia, provide composition of matter protection for this novel molecule. These patents and allowances underscore the company's strategy to obtain broad protection for its discoveries and represent an important milestone in the development of this attractive product candidate.”