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Faron Pharmacueticals' Traumakine study making good progress

Last updated: 23:31 08 May 2017 AEST, First published: 17:31 08 May 2017 AEST

picture of drugs in trial
Up to 300 ARDS patients will take part in the trial

Faron Pharmaceuticals Ltd's (LON: FARN) has received another recommendation that its ongoing INTEREST trial for lead drug Traumakine can continue as planned with no changes.

The independent data monitoring committee has now reviewed the trial data four times with the next scheduled review at 240 recruited patients and likely to be in the third quarter of 2017.

INTEREST is a Phase III double-blind, randomised, parallel-group comparison of the efficacy and safety of Traumakine in patients suffering with moderate to severe ARDS,  an often fatal orphan disease with a mortality rate of approximately 30-45%.

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The study, designed to include up to 300 patients, is currently being conducted in 60 hospital intensive care units (ICU) in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK.

The INTEREST trial protocol is targeting a 50% reduction in all cause mortality at day 28 between placebo and treatment arm (from 30% to 15%).

Dr Markku Jalkanen, Faron’s chief executive said: "We were again very delighted to learn that the IDMC gave us another recommendation to continue the INTEREST study as planned.

“We are looking forward to their next recommendation in Q3 2017, which we hope to confirm our plans for the future of the product and for ARDS patients."

There is no treatment for ARDS currently, which is often linked to pneumonia and characterised by widespread capillary leakage and inflammation in the lungs.

In a thin market, shares fell back on the news through house broker Panmure Grdon said there was no negative (or positive) read through on the likely outcome of the trial from the RNS.

But the broker did point out that the shares have been very strong performers recently and had run well ahead of of its 663p target price .

--updates for broker comment-- 

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