DPC Granted License to Develop Cancer Diagnostics

A license to develop and commercialize diagnostic assays based on two novel prostate-specific proteins for detecting and monitoring prostate cancer and perhaps other cancers has been granted to Diagnostic Products Corp. (Los Angeles, CA, USA) by Compugen, Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel). In return, Compugen will receive milestone payments and royalties based on the commercialization of its intellectual property.

The agreement couples DPC's ability to manufacture and market immunoassay-based products with Compugen's recent discoveries of a molecule linked to prostate-specific antigen (PSA-LM) and an hK2-linked molecule (K-LM). The two proteins are encoded by alternative mRNA splice variants of the genes for PSA and a related protein, human kallikrein 2 (hK2). PSA and human kallikrein 2 are closely related products of human kallikrein genes KLK3 and KLK2, respectively. Both proteins are secreted by the prostate and play important roles as biomarkers in the diagnosis of prostate cancer.

"This alliance is another strong validation of our continuing assertion that Compugen's unique computational biology research can result in the discovery of meaningful biologic information that would otherwise be extremely difficult to discover solely through experimentation,” said Mor Amitai, Ph.D., president and CEO of Compugen.





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