Faron Pharmaceuticals Limited (AIM:FARN, OTC:FPHAF)'s cancer treatment has the capacity to ignite immunity in people with late-stage skin cancer where other treatment options have failed.
That was the leading finding from the company’s phase I/II MATINS study of bexmarilimab in melanoma that will be shared with delegates at a scientific conference.
They will be told that five of the 22 sufferers receiving the treatment experienced a clinical benefit from the drug, while three out of the three who had a 12-month follow-up survived. This compared with just one in nine in the control group.
Investors were told the median overall survival rate was 457 days compared with 189 days for patients who did not experience clinical benefit.
Drilling down into the results, Faron found the survivors were PD-1 blockade refractory melanoma patients – in other words, they had failed to respond to or stopped responding to checkpoint inhibitor drugs such as Keytruda and Opdivo.
Within melanoma, anti-PD-1-based therapy failure occurs in 50-60% of advanced sufferers due to primary resistance. Additionally, 40% of patients who initially respond develop acquired resistance.
Scientists found that bexmarilimab reinvigorated exhausted T-cells turning so-called cold tumours into hot tumours.
Indeed, researchers discovered the drug worked best in those people with cold tumours.
This ability to work with existing checkpoint inhibitor drugs to reactivate the tumour response is one the biomedical world has long been looking at.
"Checkpoint inhibitors have transformed the treatment of metastatic melanoma, but far too many patients are not benefiting from currently approved immunotherapies," said Dr Anna Minchom, a consultant at the Royal Marsden in London who led the trial.
"The biomarker analysis in this trial of bexmarilimab is very interesting, indicating immune activation and pointing the way for combining bexmarilimab with other immunotherapies."
The data is being shared with attendees at the International Congress of The Society for Melanoma Research in Edinburgh, which started on Monday.