Dive Brief:
- Israeli drug discovery company Compugen Ltd. on April 2 inked a deal with AstraZeneca plc's biologics arm MedImmune, granting the pharma an exclusive license to develop unspecified bi-specific and muti-specific products from one of its pipeline programs.
- Under the deal, MedImmune will be solely responsible for R&D and any future commercial activities that result from the partnership.
- In return, Compugen will receive $10 million upfront, with the potential for as much as $200 million in milestone payments for the first product that results from the agreement.
Dive Insight:
Compugen's pipeline is mainly focused on immuno-oncology, with three programs in preclinical development and two others emerging from discovery.
Aiming to capitalize on the surging interest in cancer, Compugen has followed a route taken by many biotechs — partnering with larger companies to accelerate development of clinical candidates.
"This licensing deal allows us to monetize specific scientific advances in our programs, while we continue to advance our lead programs into clinical trials," said company CEO Anat Cohen-Dayag.
Outside of the deal terms set with MedImmune, Compugen retains all other rights to its pipeline programs both as monotherapies and in combination.
The deal with MedImmune gives Compugen another big pharma backer, adding to a similar deal in August 2013 with Bayer AG. The German drugmaker is currently partnered with Compugen on a preclinical immune checkpoint regulator called CGEN-15001T.
Another program had been in the works but after a 2017 assessment the partners decided the second candidate's potential would likely be limited and therefore didn't justify further investment.
The CGEN-15001T program has met its first three preclinical milestones, and is now transferred to Bayer for further preclinical and clinical development.
In a field crowded with "me-too" candidates, many companies are searching for novel mechanisms of action. Compugen aims to stand out by finding first-in-class drug candidates using a predictive, computational discovery platform.
Yet, Compugen has plenty of company — a September 2017 analysis by the Cancer Research Institute, for example, found more than 2,000 immuno-oncology drugs in development.