Compugen Ltd.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. Welcome to CompuGen's first quarter 2023 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. An audio webcast of this call is available in the Investors section of CompuGen's website, www.cgen.com. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce Yvonne Naughton, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Yvonne, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining us on the call today. Joining me for compagin for the prepared remarks are Dr. Anak Cohen-Diag, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Alberto Sessa, Chief Financial Officer. Dr. Henry Attaway, Chief Medical Officer, and Dr. Iran Ofeir, Senior Vice President, Research and Drug Discovery, will join us for the Q&A. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that during this call, The company may make projections or forward-looking statements regarding future events, business outlook, development efforts and their potential outcome, the company's discovery platform, anticipated progress and plans, results and timelines for its programs, financial and accounting-related matters, as well as statements regarding the company's future cash position. We wish to caution you that such statements reflect only the company's current beliefs, expectations and assumptions, but actual results, performance or achievements of the company may differ materially. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, and we refer you to the SEC filing for more details on these risks, including the company's most recent annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on February 28, 2023. The company undertakes no obligation to update projections and forward-looking statements in the future. And now, I turn the call over to Anat.

Thank you, Yvonne. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. and welcome to our first quarter 2023 update. At Compugen, we're advancing a differentiated clinical strategy, evaluating a drug combination that was never tested before in a space where there is a significant unmet need and potential opportunity to transform the lives of cancer patients with the right immunotherapy combination. Compugen has always believed that in certain patients and in certain tumor types, blocking the three pathways of the denim axis, PVRIG, TGIT, and PD-1, may be needed to enhance anti-tumor immunity. We have always said that blocking TGIT in addition to PD-1 may not be enough, a concept that is now increasingly reflected in the consistent move of larger pharma players to add an additional drug to the TG-PD-1 drug combinations in various indications. Given the potential of PVRIG inhibition to sensitize tumors to PD-1 and TG blockade, we believe the biological and mechanistic rationale support the addition of an anti-PVRIG to the anti-PD-1-TG mix, and we have the initial clinical and translational data to support our hypothesis. We are the leaders in the unique chemotherapy-free triple combination approach of blocking the three adenine axis immune checkpoints, PVRIG, TGIT, and PD-1, and we are focused on maintaining this leadership. We have initiated two follow-on proof-of-concept studies in indications not typically responding to immunotherapy. microsatellite-stable colorectal cancer, and platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. The former is enrolled in patients, and the latter is open for screening of eligible patients. In these difficult-to-treat indications, refractory to standard of care, we have previously demonstrated encouraging clinical benefit, including in patients refractory to anti-PD-1s and in patients whose tumors were immune-deserved. These data are supported by immune activation that aligns with the COM701 mechanism of action. The goal of the following clinical studies is to strengthen the evidence, help us better understand the contribution of components, and build on the extensive biomarker work to identify the patients most likely to respond. We believe that this strategy provides the fastest route in building a path to registration and de-risk our lead assets, COM701 and COM902, in these two indications. In the first quarter of the year, we executed on our promises. Firstly, we initiated enrollment in our microsatellite colorectal cancer study and were excited to be on track to report initial findings by the end of the year with final data in 2024. Secondly, at the annual ASCO conference in June, we will present encouraging data showing the preliminary anti-tumor activity of COM701 in combination with BMS anti-tigit and Evolumab in patients with recurrent metastatic microsatellite stable endometrial cancer. This will include data on antitumor activity and safety in nine patients. Patients with advanced microsatellite stable endometrial cancer have limited treatment options. In a similar population of patients, Dostalimab showed an overall response rate of approximately 15%. The data we will present for our triple combination at ASCO serves as an additional support for a COM701-mediated antitumor activity in another tumor type in patients refractory to standard of care. For now, we remain focused on our proof-of-concept studies in MSS-CRC and platinum-resistant ovarian cancer using our own TGIT COM902 in combination with our own anti-PVRIG COM701 and pembrolizumab with the goal to strengthen the evidence in these indications by enlarging the number of patients. However, our data suggests that the treatment potential for COM71 combinations goes beyond these two indications. And thirdly, we continue to feed our own pipeline, leveraging our pioneering computational discovery platform. Earlier this month, we gave an oral presentation at CIMT Europe's cancer immunotherapy meeting on our lead potential first-in-class preclinical assets, COM543, which utilizes a novel approach to harness cytokine biology to potentially treat cancer. We presented preclinical data showing that COM543 binds with high affinity to IL-18 binding protein, freeing endogenous IL-18 and restoring natural killer and T-cell activity. We also showed that blocking IL-18 binding protein prevents tumor growth and release IL-18 to activate immunity in the tumor microenvironment without affecting peripheral immunity in urine tumor models. Our approach is unique and different from recombinant cytokines targeting this pathway or from other pathways that were already tested in the clinic. These are given systemically to patients and are associated with safety challenges. The potential advantage of our approach is that our drug, COM503, is an antibody and not a cytokine. And this antibody works by freeing the body's own interleukin-18, where it is mostly upregulated in the tumor microenvironment to stimulate the immune system to fight cancer. Consequently, we believe that it has the potential advantage of avoiding the typical pharmacokinetic and systemic tolerance limitations associated with cytokine administration. Regarding our finances, we have an expected cash runway at least through the end of 2024 to support operations, reach milestones, and de-risk our lead assets, COM701 and COM902. In terms of future funding, non-dilutive funding of our pipeline assets is our priority. We see this as a big opportunity, having three potential first or best-in-class unrestricted assets with the possibility to address a significant unmet need in immuno-oncology. With that, I will hand over to Alberto for the financial update.