Compugen Signs $5 Million R&D Funding Agreement in Support of its Pipeline Program
Compugen Ltd. (MM) (NASDAQ:CGEN)
Today : Thursday 30 December 2010
Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Baize Investments (Israel) Ltd., a private corporation investing, inter alia, in innovative medical technologies, under which it will receive $5,000,000 in R&D funding. Under the terms of the funding agreement, which is in support of Compugen's recently announced Pipeline Program, Baize Investments has obtained a financial interest in five designated Compugen-discovered molecules and has been issued a warrant to purchase 500,000 Compugen shares at an exercise price of $6.00 per share, expiring June 30, 2013.
Baize Investments' financial interest in the five designated molecules consists of the right to receive from Compugen up to 10% of certain future payments received by Compugen from third parties in the event of the successful licensing out for development and/or commercialization of such designated Compugen molecules. Currently, all five molecules are in active research in the Company's Pipeline Program, with their current status ranging from in silico selection to post animal model validation. In addition, the investor has the right, until June 30, 2013, to waive his right to receive all such future payments in exchange for 833,334 Compugen ordinary shares. The financial terms for the investor were established based on the assumption that any out-licensing of the designated molecules would be undertaken no later than IND filing.
Martin Gerstel, Compugen's Chairman, stated, "This arrangement is an excellent example of how we can financially leverage our unique predictive product candidate discovery infrastructure to provide an increasing number of novel and attractive product candidates for potential licensing. Given the continuous expansion and improvement of this infrastructure, the in silico prediction and selection of candidates is from a practical standpoint, essentially without limit as to the number of attractive candidates that can feed our Pipeline Program, and on an extremely cost-effective and systematic basis. Recently we announced the addition of twenty such novel molecules to the Program, and more have been added since that announcement. The funds received by Compugen pursuant to the agreement being announced today will allow us to pursue more aggressively our ambitious objectives for the Pipeline Program during the next few years."
Mr. Gerstel continued, "In view of their long-term interest in the activities of the Company, we are very pleased to have Baize Investments and Mr. Murray Goldman join the Compugen team in this very meaningful endeavor."
Murray Goldman, Baize Investments' Chairman, stated, "During the past few years, we have followed Compugen's scientific progress and growing predictive discovery capabilities. We are extremely pleased to become a financial partner in advancing these exciting product candidates, all of which have the potential to address significant unmet medical needs."
