Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN), Tel Aviv, Israel, has reported its
results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2008.
Compugen President and CEO Alex Kotzer stated, "During this
past quarter, the diversity of our unique prediction-based discovery
efforts continued to be demonstrated with the disclosure of successful
experimental validation results for novel biomarkers for the early
preclinical detection of drug-induced kidney toxicity, for more than 10
drug target candidates for cancer antibody therapeutics, for a
therapeutic peptide candidate for immune related diseases and for three
G-Protein coupled receptor (GPCR) ligands."
Kotzer continued, "More recently, Compugen announced the
successful completion of in vitro and in vivo validation tests for
CGEN-50001, a drug that has been marketed for many years in Europe for
central nervous system indications such as depression. In these recently
completed studies, the drug, which is neither marketed nor approved for
usage in the US, was shown to significantly increase the effect of
Tamoxifen, a frequently used drug for the treatment of estrogen receptor
(ER) positive breast cancer. The beneficial impact of administering
CGEN-50001 in this completely unrelated and very major medical condition
was initially predicted in silico by our New Indications Discovery
Platform. CGEN-50001 was then selected for further validation. Following
the positive results, we are now planning a proof of concept human trial
for this new usage as well as evaluating other drugs with potential new
usages that have been predicted by this very powerful platform."
Compugen also announced the appointment of Dikla Czaczkes Axselbard
as chief financial officer, succeeding Ronit Lerner who resigned from
the company. Czaczkes Axselbard served as director of finance for
Compugen from 2002 through 2007, and as acting CFO since February 2008.
Prior to joining Compugen, Czaczkes Axselbard was chief financial
officer of Packet Technologies Ltd, a mobile internet security hardware
and software startup company and before that an audit manager at Ernst
& Young Israel. She holds an MBA in finance and a BA in accounting
and economics, both from the Tel Aviv University, and is a certified
public accountant in Israel.
Revenues for the second quarter of 2008 were $40,000 and for the
six months ended June 30, 2008, were $321,000. No revenues were reported
for either of the comparable periods of 2007.
The net loss for the most recent quarter was $3.0 million
(including a non-cash expense of $416,000 related to stock based
compensation) or $0.10 per share, compared with a net loss of $3.2
million (including a non-cash expense of $436,000 related to stock based
compensation), or $0.11 per share, for the corresponding quarter of
2007. The net loss for the first six months of 2008 was $5.5 million
(including a non-cash expense of $743,000 related to stock based
compensation), or $0.19 per share, compared with a net loss of $6.3
million (including a non-cash expense of $1.2 million related to stock
based compensation), or $0.22 per share, for the same period in 2007.
Research and development expenses of $2.4 million for the second
quarter of 2008, compared to $2.3 million for the second quarter of
2007, remain the company's largest expense, representing
approximately 70% of total expenses. These amounts are before the
deduction of governmental and other grants, which totaled $169,000 for
the second quarter ended June 30, 2008, compared with $293,000 for the
corresponding quarter in 2007.
In view of the increase in the market value of the company's
holding in Evogene Ltd, this amount is now shown as a separate line item
in the company's consolidated balance sheets and was $4.6 million
as of June 30, 2008 compared to $510,000 at year end 2007. Previously,
the company's holding in Evogene was included in Other Assets.
As of June 30, 2008, Compugen had $12.6 million in cash, cash
equivalents, deposits and marketable securities, a decrease of $4.6
million from the $17.2 million reported as of December 31, 2007.
About Compugen
Compugen's mission is to be the world leader in the discovery
and licensing of product candidates to the drug and diagnostic
industries under milestone and revenue sharing agreements. The
company's increasing inventory of powerful and proprietary
discovery platforms is enabling the predictive discovery - field after
field - of numerous therapeutic and diagnostic product candidates. These
discovery platforms are based on the company's decade-long focus on
the predictive understanding of important biological phenomena at the
molecular level. Compugen's current collaborations include Biosite,
Medarex, Inc., Merck & Co., Inc., Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics (a
Johnson & Johnson company), Roche, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics,
Inc., and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. In 2002, Compugen established
an affiliate, Evogene Ltd. (TASE: EVGN.TA), to utilize the
company's in-silico predictive discovery capabilities in the
agricultural biotechnology field.
For more information, visit Compugen's corporate Website at
www.cgen.com and Evogene's corporate Website at www.evogene.com.
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