Compugen Ltd. has achieved the initial milestone in the cancer immunotherapy collaboration it entered last year with Bayer HealthCare (Bayer). The collaboration provides for the development and commercialization of therapeutic antibodies against two checkpoint protein candidates discovered by Compugen. The milestone being announced today relates to the first preclinical milestone for one of two checkpoint protein candidates for which Compugen will receive a $1.2 million payment out of the $30 million potential milestone payments associated with joint preclinical research for the two programs.
Dr. Anat Cohen Dayag, Compugen’s President and CEO, stated, “We are very pleased by the achievement of this initial drug development milestone for one of the two programs in our collaboration with Bayer. After investing more than a decade of extensive multidisciplinary research in establishing our broadly applicable predictive discovery infrastructure, we selected the area of checkpoint-based cancer immunotherapy as our first focused discovery effort. Therefore, it is extremely satisfying to see our growing competitive position, in terms of both advancement of our therapeutic programs in immuno-oncology and continuing discoveries of novel targets in this exciting area, which is increasingly being viewed as a potential major breakthrough in cancer treatment.”
About the Bayer HealthCare/Compugen Collaboration and License Agreement
The collaboration and license agreement provides the framework for the research, development, and commercialization of antibody-based therapeutics for cancer immunotherapy against two novel Compugen-discovered immune checkpoint regulators. Under the terms of the agreement, Bayer and Compugen are jointly pursuing a preclinical research program for each of the two candidates. Subsequently, Bayer will have full control over further development and have worldwide commercialization rights for potential cancer therapeutics.
Under the terms of the agreement, Compugen has received an upfront payment of $10 million and is eligible to receive over $500 million in potential milestone payments for both checkpoint programs, plus an additional $30 million of potential milestone payments associated with joint preclinical research for the two programs. Compugen is also eligible to receive royalties on global net sales from any resulting products under the collaboration.
