Compugen Ltd (CGEN)

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Compugen to Collaborate with Teva for Discovery of Novel Biomarkers for Drug Toxicity
Tuesday January 30, 7:00 am ET
Initial efforts targeted at predicting and validating biomarkers for early detection of drug-induced nephrotoxicity


TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN - News) announced today it has signed an agreement with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NASDAQ: TEVA - News) to collaborate on a project for the discovery of biomarkers for the detection of drug toxicity in preclinical stages of the drug development process. According to the agreement, the initial focus of the collaboration will be on biomarkers for the early detection of potential nephrotoxicity. The parties may jointly choose to expand the scope of the collaboration to include biomarkers for the detection of hepatotoxicity and/or cardiotoxicity in response to drug treatment. Under the terms of the agreement, Compugen has granted Teva a license to use the discovered markers for research and development activities while retaining commercialization rights for licensing to other companies, as well as rights for internal use.

Under the collaboration, Compugen expects to utilize its proprietary computational tools, discovery engines and nucleic acid testing technologies for the purpose of predicting and validating toxicity biomarkers. Compugen's integrated analysis will incorporate data derived from biological samples collected by Teva in a preclinical study designed specifically for this project, as well as Compugen's proprietary expression and clinical data.

Nucleic acid technologies detect RNA molecules that are expressed under various pathological conditions, and Compugen's computational discovery platforms are designed to directly identify such RNA molecules. Nucleic acid based toxicity biomarkers discovered through this process may assist in the early detection of toxic drug effects and may therefore enable such drug candidates not to progress into more expensive drug development stages.

Anat Cohen-Dayag, Ph.D., Vice President of Diagnostic Biomarkers, Compugen Ltd., said, "This is another example of how the capabilities that have been developed over the past decade at Compugen now allow us to address important unmet needs in drug discovery and clinical use with unique predictive platforms. In this case, we intend to utilize our discovery engines, originally developed for immunoassay diagnostic collaborations, to predict toxicity biomarkers that could be useful during preclinical evaluation, thus enabling the identification of toxicity at an early stage, before substantial investments in drug development have been made. We are very pleased to be collaborating with Teva on this very important - and largely unmet - need in drug discovery and development."

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