Genomics-based drug and diagnostic discovery developer Compugen Ltd. (Nasdaq: CGEN; TASE: CGEN) today said it had signed an agreement to sell the controlling stake in its subsidiary Keddem Bioscience to a private US based investment company. Compugen will receive up to $15 million in milestone related equity financing for the stake.
Compugen said that this financing will be used to further develop and commercialize Keddem's unique technology platform that has been designed to consistently enable the discovery of small molecule modulators such as drugs and pesticides for potentially any given protein target. Under the agreement, Compugen will maintain a minority interest and certain future preferential access rights to utilize the Keddem technology with Compugen discovered drug targets.
Keddem’s strives to significantly improve the success rate for the discovery and development of new small molecule drug products. At present, identifying a lead molecule for a potential target is a long, arduous and often unsuccessful undertaking, and is a limiting factor in terms of both time and probability of success for novel small molecule drug products. Common methods for finding such molecules are typically variants of screening of drug/lead-like compounds (including “fragment” based approaches) or protein structure-based drug design.
Keddem’s platform is designed to provide comprehensive three-dimensional information about the target’s relevant sites, using a standard set of molecular gauges. This set is strictly exhaustive in nature and therefore equally applicable to any protein target amenable to small molecule modulation. The information obtained then enables the design of a variety of potent, selective and bioavailable small molecule modulators for the target, satisfying all pre-specified drug-like properties.
Compugen and Keddem chairman Martin Gerstel, Chairman said, “We are very pleased that this very exciting small molecule discovery capability will now be able to move forward aggressively in its further development and commercialization. At the same time, this new financing specifically for Keddem enables Compugen to maintain its focus on predictive biology for the discovery of monoclonal antibodies and therapeutic proteins in the fields of immunology and oncology, while at the same time offering potential future benefits to our shareholders from both our equity interest in Keddem and our preferred access to its technology.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 19, 2012
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