Dec 28 2009
Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN) announced today the discovery and
experimental validation of CGEN-671, a new drug target for multiple
epithelial tumors. CGEN-671 is a membrane splice variant of CD55, a
known drug target for gastric cancer for which monoclonal antibody (mAb)
therapeutics are in clinical development by others. The potential
application of CGEN-671 as a drug target was initially predicted in
silico by Compugen through the use of its Monoclonal Antibody
Targets Discovery Platform; the predicted molecule was then validated
experimentally in multiple epithelial tumors. Epithelial tumors, also
referred to as carcinomas, account for approximately 85% of all cancers,
including the ten most prevalent cancers in the western world, such as
breast, colorectal, lung, ovary, prostate and skin. Compugen has filed
patent applications covering this novel splice variant and its various
therapeutic and diagnostic utilities.
Initial experimental studies confirmed the existence of the predicted
CGEN-671 transcript (mRNA) and demonstrated that, compared with normal
tissue samples, it is highly expressed in colon carcinoma tissue.
Furthermore, in these mRNA experiments, CGEN-671’s expression level in
various healthy tissues was up to 200 times lower than the expression
level of the previously known cancer target CD55, suggesting that the
Compugen discovered splice variant should be a superior drug target
candidate for cancer treatment. In addition, the in silico
prediction of CGEN-671 identified a unique sequence present in
CGEN-671’s extracellular domain that is not present in CD55. This
sequence allows for the development of antibodies that specifically bind
to CGEN-671 and do not recognize CD55.
Recently concluded immunohistochemistry (IHC) studies, by independent
pathologists using CGEN-671 specific antibodies, further confirmed the
predicted potential for CGEN-671 to serve as a therapeutic mAb target
for colorectal, breast and lung cancer. In these studies, it was shown
that CGEN-671 was over expressed in more than 75% of the tissue sections
derived from the colorectal cancer samples and had a very low expression
in most samples of normal colon tissue. Similar results were seen in
breast cancer, where 75% of the tumor samples demonstrated significant
over expression. In lung cancer, 50% of the tumor samples had over
expression compared with normal tissues. These IHC results from diseased
and healthy tissue sections strongly suggest significant potential for
CGEN-671 as a drug target for clinical development of various types of
mAb drug therapy for colorectal, breast and lung carcinomas, and
possibly for additional epithelial derived tumors.
Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, president and co-CEO of Compugen, stated, “We are
extremely pleased to see Compugen’s continuing success in utilizing its
predictive platforms to discover previously unknown candidate molecules
in key areas of unmet medical need. Also, of major significance for us
is the fact that we have reached the point where we are now using
multiple predictive capabilities in combination to accomplish this. The
very exciting discovery and validation of CGEN-671 being announced today
as well as the oncology target that is the subject of our recently
announced collaboration with Bayer Schering Pharma, are excellent
examples of the unique capabilities obtained by combining synergistic
predictive platforms, in these cases, alternative splicing and the
identification of targets for monoclonal antibodies. In addition, the
product candidate discovery platform that led to these oncology target
discoveries, along with dozens of other potential mAb drug targets now
at various stages of validation, uses both LEADS and MED, two of our
most sophisticated infrastructure platforms. After more than a decade
building these capabilities, it is of course very gratifying to begin to
see the results of these efforts.”
http://www.cgen.com/
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