Compugen is a drug discovery company focused on therapeutic proteins and monoclonal antibodies to meet important, unmet needs in the fields of oncology and immunology. The company uses proprietary scientific understandings and predictive platforms, algorithms, and computational biology capabilities for selection of product candidates, which are then advanced in its pipeline program.

The company revealed today the start of its second focused discovery program aimed at identification of novel targets for antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) cancer therapy, targetting clinical situations with poor survival rates and/or recurrent cancers. Compugen’s successful initial discovery program found several novel immune checkpoint proteins, a number of which have been incorporated into its pipeline as Fc fusion protein drugs for immunology and/or as therapeutic targets for monoclonal antibody (mAb) drugs for cancer immunotherapy.

Cancer therapy through ADCs is where the antibody delivers a cytotoxic drug (called the payload) directly and specifically to the cancer cell in order to induce direct killing of these cells. Currently, the lack of suitable ADC targets is a major problem. This should provide a marvelous opportunity for Compugen to serve as a key source of such potential targets and their mAbs.

Compugen’s new discovery platform is designed to provide hypothesis-driven analysis of complex sets of expression and clinical data to predict proteins that can serve as novel mAb targets. An additional intended use of the discovery platform is identification of mAb targets associated with tumors unresponsive to certain treatments.

For additional information about Compugen and its discovery platforms, please visit www.cgen.com

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