Compugen at Q3 Investor Summit: AI-Driven Immuno-Oncology Focus

On Tuesday, 16 September 2025, Compugen Ltd (NASDAQ:CGEN) presented at the Q3 Investor Summit Group Virtual Conference 2025. The company highlighted its strategic focus on AI-driven discovery of novel immuno-oncology drug targets. Despite the promising advancements, challenges remain in the competitive biotech landscape.

Key Takeaways

• Compugen’s AI platform, Unigen™, is key to discovering novel drug targets.
• The company maintains a strong financial position with $94 million in cash, ensuring operations into 2027.
• Partnerships with AstraZeneca and Gilead offer significant revenue potential through royalties and milestone payments.
• Eran Ophir is set to transition to President and CEO, with Anat Cohen-Dayag becoming Executive Chairperson.
• Clinical trials for COM701 and COM902 are advancing, with important readouts expected in 2026.

Financial Results

• Cash balance as of June 30: $94 million
• Cash runway expected to last into 2027
• Gilead collaboration: Received $90 million in milestone payments; eligible for an additional $758 million
• AstraZeneca royalties: Mid-single-digit tiered royalties on sales exceeding $5 billion

Operational Updates

• Unigen™ platform has identified potential first-in-class and best-in-class antibodies

• Key pipeline assets include:

- COM701: Anti-PVRIG antibody in a randomized study for ovarian cancer

- COM902: Anti-TIGIT antibody in collaboration with AstraZeneca and Arcus

• AstraZeneca’s rifleucostamid trials present a major revenue opportunity

Future Outlook

• COM701 trial readout expected in the second half of 2026, targeting progression-free survival improvements
• AstraZeneca’s 10 Phase III trials for rifleucostamid could significantly impact future sales
• Gilead’s GS0321 program progressing, with Compugen eligible for substantial milestone payments and royalties

Management Update

• Eran Ophir to become President and CEO
• Anat Cohen-Dayag to take on the role of Executive Chairperson, aiming to strengthen company growth

Readers interested in further details are invited to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Q3 Investor Summit Group Virtual Conference 2025:

Eran Ophir, Chief Scientific Officer, soon to be President and CEO, Compugen: My name is Eran Ophir, and I am the Chief Scientific Officer of Compugen. I’m excited to say I will soon step up and become the President and CEO of Compugen. Compugen uses AI-based computational biology tools in order to identify novel drug targets to harness the immune system to fight cancer. Actually, we are doing computational biology for quite a while, way before the recent hype of AI started. We started as a hardware company, trying to use sophisticated hardware to be able to deal with the large amount of DNA that was starting to be generated in the 1990s. We were listed at NASDAQ in 2000. Around 2010, under the leadership of Anat Cohen-Dayag, we realized that the best way to generate value out of our computational biology capabilities is through identifying novel drug targets and taking them to the clinic ourselves to treat patients.

This is exactly why I joined Compugen, due to my passion to unveil novel biology and to bring this innovation to patients with unmet needs. We are focusing on the field of immuno-oncology. Immuno-oncology has revolutionized the treatment of cancer with Keytruda as the poster child, the best-seller drug, with $29 billion of sales last year. Many patients do not benefit from Keytruda or other IO agents. Many cancer indications are not responsive. There are novel combinations and novel immunological approaches that are required to bring immuno-oncology to a larger portion of the patients. This is exactly where Compugen is aiming to generate value, to bring novel drug targets into immuno-oncology. We do that by utilizing our computational capabilities built along years. In the center is our AI-based computational platform called Unigen™.

What is most exciting, I think, about this platform is that we built along years a database built of patient samples. The platform is validated. We are not just saying that we are doing AI to do things in R&D. We have shown again and again that we can take targets out of the computer and take them all the way into testing in clinical trials. In our platform, this is further validated by our partnership with big pharma companies like AstraZeneca and Gilead. We have two fully owned assets in the clinical stage. We have COM701, which targets PVRIG, so it’s a potential first-in-class antibody. We have COM902, a potential best-in-class antibody targeting TIGIT. Now, the field of TIGIT had its ups and downs in the recent years.

I would say mostly there are the two types of TIGIT antibodies, ones with an FC-active tail and one with an FC-non-active tail. The reality today is that all of the big trials by big pharma companies of FC-active TIGIT antibodies, all of them were discontinued. Antibodies with FC-non-active, like our own COM902, are now in clinical trials in phase III by AstraZeneca and Arcus, Gilead. Obviously, successful phase III results of these assets could bring value to COM902, which, to my knowledge, is the only non-partnered FC-non-active TIGIT antibody out there. We also have our collaboration. We have the PD-1/TIGIT bispecific derived from COM902 that we license, the right to use COM902 as part of this bispecific to AstraZeneca. We have, more recently, a deal with Gilead around COM503, called now GS0321, that is targeting ILT in binding protein.

We are eligible for more than $1 billion of future milestones, potential future milestones, from these two collaborations. In addition, we continue to use our antigen to generate multiple other assets. We have a stable, solid cash balance as of June 30 with roughly $94 million, with expected cash runway into 2027. Let’s look at our pipeline. First, we have COM701, our anti-PVRIG antibody. We just started earlier this year the MYO variant study, a randomized study in platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer in the maintenance settings. We also have the triplet study with 902 and pembrolizumab that we reported previously. We have rifleucostamid, the PD-1/TIGIT bispecific. This asset is being run by our partner, AstraZeneca, including 10 phase III studies. The additional license program, the GS0321, and, as mentioned before, we have other non-disclosed assets in the early pipeline, all of them derived from Unigen™, our computational discovery engine.

About our partner, AstraZeneca. They’re really employing a very broad clinical development program for rifleucostamid, including 10 phase III trials in multiple indications, in monotherapy, in combination with chemotherapy, in combination with powerful drugs like ADCs, like the Enelto and the Datto-2 anti-TROP2 ADC. Here we see definitely a potential major revenue source for Compugen Ltd. because AstraZeneca is using rifleucostamid as the new IO backbone, potentially replacing the previous PD-1, PD-L1s. They predict future sales of more than $5 billion. Obviously, we are eligible for mid-single-digit tiered royalties on this program. This is, of course, a great opportunity for us. AstraZeneca is going to report in the coming ESMO results from a study in non-small cell lung cancer. They report another study in October on a study in combination with Datto-DXT in bladder cancer. Moving to our second license program, the GS0321, this is another asset we identified computationally.

This is really a novel way to harness cytokine biology for the treatment of cancer. There are many challenges when you try to use cytokine as therapies to treat cancer patients. We found a very differentiated way identified computationally to harness the cytokine approach in a very different way that we think can overcome many of the challenges that other people are facing trying to use cytokine as therapeutics. We licensed this program to Gilead. We received to date $90 million for this collaboration in milestones. We are eligible for an additional $758 million in milestones and a single-digit to low double-digit tiered royalties. We are running the phase I. We started earlier this year. It’s enrolling nicely. We are excited to see another first-in-class from our predictions going into patients. Last and definitely not least, our own internal program, the COM701.

This is an anti-PVRIG blocker antibody we identified computationally, where there are no publications around it. We are moving first in the clinic with this asset. We have others following us, like BioNTech, JSK, and others. We have the first-mover advantage. Also here, we have the class of antibodies which we think is the right way to tackle also PVRIG, which is a reduced FC, effector function, antibody. After showing signals in the last line, platinum-resistant ovarian cancer patients, employing the very differentiated biology of PVRIG to treat specifically a relatively not very hot indication like ovarian cancer, we’ve now started a new study going earlier in the treatment algorithm into patients which are after chemotherapy, but they are still sensitive to the chemotherapy. We think that these patients will have less compromised immune system. Talk about patients in second or third line. They receive chemotherapy.

They respond to the chemotherapy. They have low tumor burden. If they already received bevoparp or they’re not eligible for bevoparp, there is no standard of care. This is exactly the unmet need that we identified. We are starting now adaptive trial design that in subtrial one is going to be COM701 in monotherapy, 40 patients, randomized versus placebo, like no treatment at all because there is no standard of care, 20 patients. The readout is going to be in the second half of 2026. We expect to see improvement of at least three months in the progression-free survival of the patients following chemotherapy with COM701 versus the ones who received only chemotherapy without any maintenance. We are also going to report in the coming ESMO in October results of a pooled analysis of our previous trials in a platinum-resistant setting.

We think that this analysis will show some of the rationale why we think that this study, the MYO study, is an exciting study with the ability to really change the landscape of platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer patients. Lastly, to discuss our management. As I mentioned at the beginning of the talk and is not yet shown here, I will step up soon to become the President and CEO. Anat Cohen-Dayag, who was leading us in the last 15 years, is moving into a newly created position of an Executive Chairperson. I strongly believe that this new leadership structure could serve as a strong foundation for the future growth of Compugen. Together with our strong scientific expertise and culture of innovation, our differentiated internal pipeline, and our partner programs, I think that Compugen is well positioned for growth in the coming years. Thank you for your attention.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Yvonne Naughton, our Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for listening.

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