Date: 2012-11-19
Type of information: Fundraising
Company: Keddem Bioscience, wholly owned subsidiary of Compugen (Israel)
Investors: private U.S.-based investment company
Amount: $15 million
Funding type: financing round
Planned used: This financing will be used to further develop and commercialize a technology platform that has been designed to consistently enable the discovery of small molecule modulators (e.g., drugs, pesticides) for potentially any given protein target.
Others: Compugen Ltd. has announced the signing of an agreement with a private U.S.-based investment company pursuant to which up to $15,000,000 in milestone related equity financing will be made available to Keddem Bioscience Ltd., currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Compugen. Under the agreement, the new investor will obtain a majority equity interest in Keddem, with Compugen maintaining a minority interest and certain future preferential access rights to utilize the Keddem technology with Compugen discovered drug targets.
Keddem’s platform is designed to provide comprehensive three-dimensional information about the target’s relevant site(s), 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.
The concept underlying the Keddem technology was initially conceived and developed within the chemistry division of Compugen, which had been created to address this critical industry need. In 2004, the program was transferred to Keddem as a wholly owned subsidiary, where it was further developed, including some initial validation studies, through 2007, when active research was discontinued due to Compugen\'s decision to focus on its predictive biology programs. Keddem will be managed by Dr. Dror Ofer and Dr. Arnon Levy, both of whom managed the program while it was a division of Compugen, and later, as Co-CEOs of Keddem.
Therapeutic area:
