Bayer milestone for Compugen in cancer immunotherapy deal

Shares of Israel-based Compugen (Nasdaq: CGEN) rose nearly 4% in pre-market trading today, after it said it has achieved the initial milestone in the cancer immunotherapy collaboration it  entered last year with Germany’s pharma major Bayer (BAYN: DE).

The collaboration with Bayer HealthCare provides for the development and commercialization of therapeutic antibodies against two checkpoint protein candidates discovered by Compugen. The payment 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 milestones associated with joint preclinical research for the two programs.

Anat Cohen Dayag, Compugen’s president and chief executive, 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.”