NOXXON Pharma N.V. announced it has entered into a material transfer agreement with the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to further explore the effects of NOXXON's lead compounds, the CXCL12 inhibitor NOX-A12 and the CCL2 inhibitor NOX-E36, individually and combined, on brain tumors. The research program will be led by Mark R. Gilbert, M.D., Chief of the Neuro-Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research (NCI/CCR), part of the NIH. Under the agreement, NOXXON will supply NOX-A12 and mNOX-E361 to the NCI, which will conduct preclinical testing in different combinations with immunomodulatory treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors.

The various combinations will be tested in an array of experiments in three murine brain cancer models, with extensive and detailed characterization of the tumor microenvironment. NOX-A12 is being investigated in the Phase 1/2 GLORIA dose-escalation study in brain cancer (glioblastoma) patients, top-line data from which were presented at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, taking place in Chicago, Illinois, US, on June 5, 2022. NCI is not participating in this clinical study.