TURKU, FINLAND: Faron Pharmaceuticals Oy, the clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, announced plans to initiate a new state of the art process for the manufacturing of interferon (IFN) beta-1a. To support this, Faron has received a €2.1 million low interest rate loan from Business Finland, the governmental innovation financing agency of Finland.

The loan funds will be used to develop and select a new cell line that can be used for future commercial scale production of Faron’s human IFN beta-1a.

Dr. Markku Jalkanen, Faron’s CEO, said: “This is a very important initiative backed by the Finnish Government. We have a good existing stock of IFN beta-1a, but given the on-going clinical trials (REMAP-CAP and The WHO’s Solidarity Trial) and the potential for increasing future demand of IFN beta-1a for COVID-19 and other viral infections like influenza  we need to begin up-scaling our manufacturing capacity.”

Faron is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel treatments for medical conditions with significant unmet needs. The Company currently has a pipeline based on the receptors involved in regulation of immune response in oncology and organ damage.

Clevegen, its precision immunotherapy, is a novel anti-Clever-1 antibody with the ability to switch immune suppression to immune activation in various conditions, with potential across oncology, infectious disease and vaccine development. Currently in phase I/II clinical development as a novel macrophage checkpoint immunotherapy for patients with untreatable solid tumours, Clevegen has potential as a single-agent therapy or in combination with other standard treatments including immune checkpoint molecules.