Bayer has furthered its research focus on cancer immunotherapy by forming a collaboration with Israeli biotech Compugen, which specialises in computational approaches for drug discovery. The deal will centre on advancing antibody-based therapeutics against two novel immune checkpoint regulators discovered by Compugen that are believed to play a key role in immunosuppression. The concept of using the immune system to act against tumour cells was validated with the US FDA approval of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Yervoy® (ipilimumab), which targets the immune checkpoint protein cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4), for metastatic melanoma in 2011.