On November 4, 2019 Compugen Ltd. (Nasdaq: CGEN), a clinical-stage cancer immunotherapy company and a leader in predictive target discovery, reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared its investigational new drug (IND) application for COM902, its immuno-oncology therapeutic antibody targeting TIGIT in patients with advanced malignancies (Press release, Compugen, NOV 4, 2019, View Source [SID1234550216]).
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Under this IND, the Company intends to initiate a Phase 1 clinical trial in patients with advanced malignancies for whom standard of care therapies are currently ineffective. Expected to begin in early 2020, the clinical trial is designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and preliminary anti-tumor activity of COM902. The study is planned to be conducted at multiple centers in the United States and site selection activities are currently underway.
"IND clearance for COM902 is an important milestone that marks the third program based on new drug targets we discovered to be evaluated in the clinic," said Anat Cohen-Dayag, Ph.D., President and CEO of Compugen. "We believe that TIGIT inhibitors may have an important role in the immunotherapy landscape and that our biology driven approach of combining anti-TIGIT and anti-PVRIG inhibitors, with or without PD-1 blockers, has the potential to improve clinical responses in patients who are unresponsive and refractory to currently approved immunotherapies. As the only company with clinical candidates targeting both PVRIG and TIGIT, we hold a differentiated position in the crowded immuno-oncology space."
Dr. Cohen-Dayag continued, "We are proud of our tremendous progress in recent years, transforming into a clinical-stage company with three anticipated Phase 1 programs in the clinic expected in 2020, two of which we are being developed internally. Importantly, these three programs address targets which originated from our unique computational discovery platform, highlighting the power and value of our computational capabilities to discover new, potentially significant biological pathways and targets for innovative therapeutics."
About COM902
COM902, a high affinity, fully human antibody targeting TIGIT, was developed for combination treatment with COM701. Preclinical data demonstrate that TIGIT inhibition, either alone or in combination with other checkpoint inhibitors, can enhance T cell activation and increase anti-tumor immune responses. Parallel inhibition of TIGIT and PVRIG, the two coinhibitory arms of the DNAM-1 axis, results in synergistic effects on effector T cell function and tumor growth inhibition in various model systems that can be further increased with the addition of PD-1 blockade. Based on preclinical data these combinations may be clinically important for enhancing anti-tumor immune response and expanding the patient population responsive to checkpoint inhibition.
Compugen discovered TIGIT in 2009 leveraging its immune checkpoint computational discovery platform through which PVRIG was also discovered. The TIGT discovery was published by Compugen in October 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).