Docent Kontro is a specialist physician at HUS and an expert in blood cancers. He conducts patient research for Faron at his clinic and writes scientific articles regarding MDS research involving BEXMAB patients. If BEAM-X ever starts, he likely will for AML patients as well. Or rather, Bex patients. He doesn’t seem to have a significant amount of Faron shares. He surely sincerely hopes that Bex succeeds so he, too, would gain another tool. He likely receives compensation for each research patient. He likely receives compensation for videos and presentations at scientific meetings. It would certainly be nice to be cited as a researcher if Bex succeeds. It would surely be nice to receive a standing ovation from thousands of oncologists, as happened to others regarding the pancreatic cancer drug at ASCO26.
What such top experts say cannot be at the level of what one can write anonymously as a negative or positive take on a forum like this. An expert does not emphasize that so-and-so many didn’t get any response or that T-cell counts didn’t increase, but rather emphasizes what moves the matter forward. Acknowledging the facts.
In the video, Kontro tells the same things as at EHA, where the video itself was also recorded. Cell-level examination of patients who have a response or do not. He says using Bex increases T-cell activation and cytokines. Potential mechanisms for the improvement of blood counts. However, he concludes by saying that the upcoming global phase 2b trial is needed to validate the results.
”First of all, starting, what is bexmarilimab? So Clever-1 is actually an immunosuppressive molecule that is expressed on the macrophages and monocytes. With bexmarilimab we can actually target Clever-1 and basically that leads to enhanced antigen presentation, enhanced HLA-DR expression and also T-cell activation and cytokine production. And in the BEXMAB trial that we conducted, which was a phase I/II trial, we actually included 20 patients with previously untreated high-risk MDS and 32 patients with HMA-failed MDS. We have some updates on the results regarding the frontline patient population. 45% of the patients achieved CR responses, and we have now updated the duration of CR. The median duration is 16 months. When looking at HMA failed patient population, the overall survival median is 14.5 months, so it continues to hold strong. And then for a patient population, the overall response rate is 64%. So basically what we actually presented at this meeting, we wanted to evaluate that what’s happening in the patients when we are treating them with azacitidine and bexmarilimab. First of all, based on the single cell RNA sequencing data and spectral flow, we were capable of showing that, first of all, quite interestingly, we see elevation of erythroid progenitor cells, and perhaps that might also translate to hematologic improvements. In addition to that, we actually also saw quite interesting differences in T-cell populations comparing the responders and non-responders. So for responders, we observed that these patients actually had more central memory T-cells, whereas non-responders had increased amounts of T-cells that were kind of exhausted. And perhaps these actually can be then validated later on in the upcoming Phase IIb trial, which will be a global trial recruiting patients for frontline population across the globe.”