Faron Pharmaceuticals Oy to showcase the potential of cancer drug at ASCO conference

Faron Pharmaceuticals Oy (AIM:FARN, OTC:FPHAF) will use a prestigious cancer conference to provide insights on its lead compound, bexmarilimab, that hint at its potential to enhance the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitor drugs.

Drawing on work carried out via its MATINS trial, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will hear patients benefiting from the drug had higher levels of Clever-1 positive intra-tumoral cells than the wider patient group.

They will also be told that ‘responders’ also had low PD-L1 levels, a population that does not typically respond to or is ineligible for treatment with checkpoint inhibitors.

“While the arrival of currently available checkpoint inhibitors was, undoubtedly, one of the most exciting breakthroughs in cancer care, their low response rate in most tumour types continues to hinder their clinical application,” said Petri Bono, the principal investigator of Faron’s MATINS clinical trial.

“There remains an urgent need for effective new treatment options, including novel assets that work synergistically with existing checkpoint inhibitors to ignite and amplify the patient’s immune response.”

Faron said combination studies are underway in both solid tumours and blood cancers “to further explore the clinical benefit of Clever-1 inhibition” and to assess the potential of bexmarilimab to prime the immune system in patients unresponsive to existing drugs such as checkpoint inhibitors.

The data will be featured in an ASCO session on June 5. For more information, click here.