Compugen shares soar on massive deal with Gilead, worth up to $848 million
Compugen shares soar on massive deal with Gilead, worth up to $848 million
The Israeli company utilizes its broadly applicable predictive computational discovery capabilities to identify new drug targets and biological pathways for developing novel cancer immunotherapies
Gilead Sciences announced on Tuesday an agreement with Israeli company Compugen, a clinical-stage cancer immunotherapy company which develops computational target discovery. Gilead, which has a market cap of $99 billion, will exclusively license Compugen’s potential first-in-class, pre-clinical antibody program against IL-18 binding protein, including the COM503 drug candidate. The high affinity antibody blocks the interaction between IL-18 binding protein and IL-18, thereby freeing natural IL-18 in the tumor microenvironment to inhibit cancer growth.
Gilead will make Compugen an upfront payment of $60 million and $30 million in a near term milestone payment subject to IND clearance of COM503 expected in 2024. Compugen will also be eligible to receive up to an additional $758 million in future development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments, with a total deal value of $848 million. Compugen will also be eligible to receive single-digit to low double-digit tiered royalties on worldwide net sales.
Compugen, which was founded over 20 years ago, had seen its value plummet in recent years, and had just $57.5 million in its coffers as of the end of the third quarter of the year, which was set to only provide it with enough runway for another year.
Compugen utilizes its broadly applicable predictive computational discovery capabilities to identify new drug targets and biological pathways for developing novel cancer immunotherapies. COM503 is a potential first-in-class, high affinity antibody which blocks the interaction between IL-18 binding protein and IL-18, thereby releasing natural IL-18 in the tumor microenvironment and inhibiting cancer growth.
“We are delighted to enter into this collaboration with Gilead and believe that Gilead’s confidence in our differentiated approach to harness cytokine biology for cancer therapeutics speaks to the quality of our computational discovery capabilities as well as our ability to translate our novel discoveries into investigational drugs in the clinic and we look forward to working together to bring new treatment options to patients,” said Anat Cohen-Dayag, Ph.D., President, and CEO at Compugen.
Compugen also announced on Tuesday that it will be eligible to receive a milestone payment of $10 million from AstraZeneca, when the first patient is dosed in AstraZeneca’s ARTEMIDE-Bil01 trial with rilvegostomig.. The ARTEMIDE-Bil01 trial is expected to recruit about 750 subjects in more than 20 countries with biliary tract cancer who will be randomized to receive rilvegostomig or placebo with investigator choice chemotherapy as adjuvant treatment after resection with curative intent.
