Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN), a leading predictive drug discoverybeing held November 6-11 in San Francisco, California, the company has disclosed recent results from a translational company headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, announced, on November 9, 2015, that, in an oral presentation at the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting study supporting the potential treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with Compugen’s RA candidate drug CGEN-15001. CGEN-15001 is an Fc fusion protein based on one of the multiple novel immune checkpoint candidates discovered by the Company. The translational study, conducted in collaboration with Professor Iain B. McInnes, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, was designed to evaluate the potential to translate the efficacy of CGEN-15001, previously observed in animal models of RA disease, to human patients. Professor McInnes is a world-renowned clinician and scientist in the field of rheumatology and a member of Compugen’s scientific advisory board. He is Professor of Medicine, Muirhead Chair of Medicine, and Director of the Institute of Infection, Immunity, and Inflammation at the University of Glasgow. The study’s experimental design utilizes co-cultures of immune cells from individual RA patients that mimic the deleterious interaction of these cells within the joints of RA patients. This interaction drives secretion of pro-inflammatory proteins known as cytokines that have a major role in RA pathology, leading to chronic progressive joint inflammation and damage. Thus, these co-cultures provide a translational tool to evaluate the effect of potential drugs for treatment of RA.Login Or Register To Read Full Story