January 6th, 2003
Tel Aviv, Israel - January 6, 2003 - Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ: CGEN) announced today that Evogene Ltd., its agricultural biotechnology subsidiary, is in the final stages of closing a $2.0 million private placement with a group of Israeli, European and United States investors.
Evogene is an emerging company focused on the development of "tailor-made" plants and plant "biofactories" for the improvement of crops and plant derived products. The company is unique in merging state-of-the-art molecular biology and computational technologies with the most advanced classical breeding technologies.
Compugen's agricultural biotechnology activity was initiated in 1999 as a division of Compugen with the expectation that it would be spun off as a separate company in order to allow Compugen to maintain its focus on human therapeutics and diagnostics. In January 2002, this was accomplished through the co-founding of Evogene as a majority-owned subsidiary of Compugen together with Dr. Hagai Karchi and Dr. Rafi Meissner.
Mor Amitai, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Compugen, said, "We have been very pleased by the progress of Evogene and are delighted that the company has been successful in raising additional funding. Under the initial agreement between the two companies, we agreed to provide financing for Evogene's expected expenditures during 2002, and granted Evogene a license to utilize our LEADS computational biology platform and other technologies in the field of agricultural biotechnology. We are pleased to see that Evogene was able to translate our initial investment into an attractive venture opportunity."
Ofer Haviv, chief operating officer of Evogene, stated, "Our first private placement is clearly an important financial milestone in our development into a leading agricultural biotechnology company, and is also a vote of confidence, by our new investors, in our ability to address the growing needs of the plant biotechnology market. Having reached this milestone, we would like to thank Compugen for its past and continuing support as Evogene moves forward to the next stages of its development."
About Evogene
Evogene Ltd. is a pioneer in overcoming the limitations of both classical breeding and modern biotechnology in order to generate improved crops and new agricultural biotechnology products in an economically efficient manner. This objective is accomplished by integrating computational biology and plant genomics with classical breeding to create high-throughput platforms that generate improved plants and plant derived products by accelerating, directing and mimicking the natural evolution process. For additional information, please visit Evogene's Website at www.evogene.com.
About Compugen
Compugen (NASDAQ: CGEN) is a pioneer in the merging of computational technologies with biology, chemistry and medicine to enhance drug discovery and development. This unique capability is a proven basis for providing high value products and services to leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and for in-house discovery. For additional information, please visit Compugen's corporate Website at www.cgen.com.
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include words like "may," "expects," "believes," and "intends," and describe opinions about future events. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Compugen to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Some of these risks are: changes in relationships with collaborators; the impact of competitive products and technological changes; risks relating to the development of new products; the ability to implement technological improvements; the ability of Compugen to obtain and retain customers. These and other factors are identified and more fully explained under the heading "Risk Factors" in Compugen's annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Contact Information:
Compugen:
Nurit Benjamini
Chief Financial Officer
nurit.benjamini@cgen.com
Tel: +972-3-765-8525
Evogene:
Ofer Haviv
Chief Operating Officer
ofer.haviv@evogene.com
Tel: +972-8-931-1904
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