Compugen announces publication of peer reviewed paper on IL-18

Compugen announced the simultaneous online publication of a peer reviewed paper titled ‘Unleashing natural IL-18 activity using an anti-IL-18BP blocker antibody induces potent immune stimulation and anti-tumor effects’ link, in Cancer Immunology Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research with a presentation at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting on April 5-11 in San Diego, California. “There is a growing recognition of the importance of the IL-18 pathway in cancer immunology reflected in the surge in investment and collaboration in this space,” said Anat Cohen-Dayag, President, and CEO of Compugen. “Through our computational discovery work at Compugen we identified that IL-18 binding protein, a natural inhibitor of IL-18, is highly expressed in patients as a potential immune resistant mechanism. Taking advantage of the high levels of endogenous IL-18BP bound-IL-18 in the tumor microenvironment, we, along with our partner Gilead Sciences are developing COM503, a differentiated antibody approach to harness cytokine biology for cancer therapeutics.”