On December 7, 2016 Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN), a leading predictive drug discovery company, reported the following key highlights from its R&D Day that took place this morning in NYC:

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Disclosure of a therapeutic antibody program targeting TIGIT to complement the Company’s CGEN-15029 program, following new data recently generated for the CGEN-15029/PVRIG program. TIGIT and PVRIG represent two distinct arms of the same biological pathway. Based on this and experimental data, the Company believes there is significant added value to developing both arms as a potential combination therapy. Compugen expects to select the lead antibody for CGEN-15137/TIGIT by end of Q1 2017.

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COM701, clinical candidate antibody targeting CGEN-15029/PVRIG, is currently undergoing process development as part of the manufacturing activities to generate clinical material. IND-filing for COM701 is anticipated in Q4 2017.

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Update on status of cancer immunotherapy partnership with Bayer entered in August 2013. As previously disclosed, after achieving all preclinical stage milestones for CGEN-15001T immune checkpoint, this program was transferred to Bayer for further development. To date, preclinical activities are on track, and pivotal toxicity studies and GMP clinical trial material production are ongoing. As previously disclosed, the second program under the partnership, CGEN-15022, is at an earlier stage and further characterization studies of its role in anti-cancer immune responses are ongoing.

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Disclosure of a new therapeutic program focusing on a protein target expressed in various cancers, and which is highly correlated with an M2 macrophages marker. The target was also shown to inhibit T cell activation in cell-based studies. Macrophages are immune cells that are highly immune suppressive in the tumor microenvironment, and targeting such cells offers the potential for efficacy in patients non-responsive to checkpoint inhibitors. Therapeutic antibody discovery activities have been initiated for this program.

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Overview of the Company’s immuno-oncology target validation pipeline activities, which primarily focus on myeloid targets. With an aim to complement and expand the patient population responsive to checkpoints inhibitors, blocking myeloid targets may serve as the next wave of cancer immunotherapies. Myeloid CGEN-target candidates have been identified within the tumor microenvironment of multiple cancers and are aggressively pursued by the Company and in collaboration with Prof. Drew Pardoll.

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The event also featured a presentation by Prof. Drew Pardoll, Chairman of Compugen’s Scientific Advisory Board and Abeloff Professor of Oncology, Medicine, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, and Director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins. The presentation included an overview of the immune checkpoint inhibition landscape, including both T cells and myeloid cells. Prof. Pardoll further presented in vitro and in vivo data demonstrating the importance of PVRIG/CGEN-15029 as a significant T cell immune checkpoint as well as evidences that PVRIG-blockage synergizes with PD1/PDL1 in unleashing T cell activity.