Faron Pharmaceuticals Ltd., a global, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating innovative cancer treatments that leverage the patient’s own immune system, today announces that the first patient has been dosed in the Phase 1/2 BLAZE investigator-initiated trial. Faron is based in Turku, Finland.
The trial evaluates Faron’s lead asset, bexmarilimab, in combination with the widely used anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (OPDIVO®) in patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and melanoma who have developed resistance to and experienced disease progression on prior immunotherapy.
The trial will evaluate the safety and antitumor activity of the combination in this treatment-resistant setting.
The BLAZE trial is led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London, operating in partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
Anna Minchom, MD, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Group Leader at The Institute of Cancer Research, and Principal Investigator of the trial, said, “Overcoming secondary resistance to immunotherapy is an urgent priority for advanced lung cancer and melanoma patients. Tumor-associated macrophages are increasingly recognized as key drivers of immune resistance in these tumors, and bexmarilimab offers a mechanistically distinct approach to potentially addressing this. Treating our first patient moves us into a true proof-of-concept setting that we hope will translate into a meaningful clinical advance for patients.”
The enrollment marks the first patient treated in the BLAZE trial and first clinical evaluation of bexmarilimab in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor in patients with acquired resistance to immunotherapy.
The BLAZE trial leverages a mechanism-driven sequential priming strategy: patients receive an initial run-in dose of bexmarilimab, aiming to reprogram the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, before transitioning to a combination of bexmarilimab and nivolumab to restore sensitivity to checkpoint inhibition.
The rationale rests on emerging evidence that tumor-associated macrophages are a primary driver of secondary resistance to anti-PD-1 therapy — and that Clever-1 blockade may be uniquely positioned to reverse this resistance mechanism.
Petri Bono, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer of Faron, stated, “We are proud to see initiation of the BLAZE trial. Overcoming checkpoint resistance is one of the major frontiers in oncology, and clinical responses in this setting would represent proof-of-concept of resistance reversal. This is particularly meaningful given that patients have previously responded to and received at least six months of anti-PD-1 treatment before entering the trial. Given the large NSCLC and melanoma populations and the broad use of nivolumab, a positive signal here could have significant implications beyond this trial. Expanding bexmarilimab into a combination setting with a widely used PD-1 inhibitor is a core pillar of our clinical development strategy. We are pleased to support the work led by the exceptional teams at the ICR and The Royal Marsden and look forward to the data generated through the trial.”
Bexmarilimab is Faron’s wholly owned, investigational immunotherapy designed to overcome resistance to existing treatments and optimize clinical outcomes by targeting myeloid cell function. It binds to Clever-1, a receptor on immunosuppressive macrophages that helps cancer evade the immune system. By targeting Clever-1, bexmarilimab reprograms the tumor microenvironment to ignite a potent anti-tumor immune response.
Faron (AIM: FARN, First North: FARON) is a global, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focused on tackling cancers via novel immunotherapies. Its mission is to bring the promise of immunotherapy to a broader population by uncovering novel ways to control and harness the power of the immune system. The Company’s lead asset is bexmarilimab, a novel anti-Clever-1 humanized antibody, with the potential to remove immunosuppression of cancers through reprogramming myeloid cell function. Bexmarilimab is being investigated in Phase 1/2 clinical trials as a potential therapy for patients with hematological cancers and solid tumors in combination with other standard treatments.
