Cyxone is revising its previous strategy due to important patent grants and valuable market opportunities. During 2023 a range of new biosimilar disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA, have been broadly introduced to the American market. As a result, patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis that have inadequate response to methotrexate will now be offered a range of less costly TNFa inhibitor alternatives.

However, the segment of patients - up to 50% - that do not adequately control disease with this class of drugs, lack alternatives. Rabeximod, an oral synthetic DMARD in phase 2, exploring a novel mechanism of action, and with demonstrated effect in patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis is a leading provider for targeting inadequate response to DMARDs, such as TNFa inhibitor class of medicines. Due to this, Cyxone has decided to shift its development strategy to focus on a growing market segment with underserved patients not sufficient helped by current therapeutic options.

Going forward, rabeximod will be explored in a fast-tracked development program consisting of small exploratory studies, investigating the compound in patients with inadequate response to the TNFa inhibitor class of medications. Besides this change of priority, the development program and activities now planned will lead to lower costs in 2024-2025 than previously anticipated, and acquired know-how and material assets from previous study activities will instead be transferred to the new development activities and form the basis of a series of new smaller "proof-of-concept" studies. Importantly, the strategy change is centered around the recent development progress for the new unique formulation of rabeximod, for which a valuable US patent was granted in May of 2023, providing an additional 20 years of patent lifetime.