Compugen spikes after deal with Gilead for anti-tumor drug

Cancer immunotherapy company Compugen’s (CGEN) shares are up $1.25, or 171%, to $1.98 in afternoon trading after Gilead Sciences (GILD) announced an agreement with Compugen to exclusively license its potential first-in-class, pre-clinical antibody program against IL-18 binding protein, including the COM503 drug candidate. Compugen also announced earlier that it will be eligible to receive a milestone payment of $10M from AstraZeneca (AZN) when the first patient is dosed in AstraZeneca’s ARTEMIDE-Bil01 trial with rilvegostomig. Rilvegostomig is a PD-1/TIGIT bispecific antibody where the TIGIT component is derived from Compugen’s clinical-stage anti-TIGIT antibody, COM902.