Computational Target Discovery Platform Reveals Insights About Checkpoints and Cancer Immunotherapies with Anat Cohen-Dayag Compugen

Anat Cohen-Dayag is the President and CEO of Compugen, which uses its computational discovery platform to identify new drug targets allowing them to develop new treatments based on these new targets. While most immunotherapies are based on proteins PD-1 or PD-L1, Compugen has discovered two other proteins involved in stimulating the immune system response against cancer. Anat elaborates, "In 2009, we discovered the protein called TIGIT. We discovered it computationally, and we sent it to publication back-to-back with Genentech. And this is the protein that is being now developed by Compugen and by others, Genentech being the leader in this field with phase three studies in the clinic. Their phase two data showed improvement for patients with non-small cell cancer." "Following this TIGIT discovery, we decided that we're not going to compete in the TIGIT space, per se, but that we would like to focus the company on a different type of family of proteins, and we discovered PVRIG. And PVRIG is, again, a protein that we believe has a role in stimulating the immune system response against the cancer. But it is not working only alone. It is a pathway that is working in parallel and in complement to TIGIT and to PD-1."   #Compugen #TIGIT #PVRIG #ImmunoOncology #OvarianCancer #ColonCancer #MachineLearning #ML cgen.com Download the transcript here