Addressing Unmet Need

Patients are told they are “cancer-free” only to discover that a few undetectable cancer cells survived initial treatment and they have to face another battle with cancer. Recurrent cancer is frequently more aggressive and resistant to treatments, which for many cancer patients means survival of less than a year. Prevention of recurrence remains an unmet need in oncology and FREZENT’s mission is to address this need for over 30 million cancer survivors worldwide who are currently facing ~50% risk of cancer relapse. Our initial focus is on head and neck cancer with 800,000 people diagnosed annually and 30-60% chance of recurrence within the first two years after initial treatment. 

Our Approach

FREZENT brings a paradigm shift - targeting non-diving dormant cancer cells. Conventional therapies kill rapidly dividing tumor cells leaving behind the dormant cancer cells which can later reactivate and cause recurrence. Our approach is to prevent dormant cancer cell reactivation by leveraging their metabolic dependences on nutrients and growth factors provided by the tumor microenvironment.

Our pipeline includes first-in-class antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) engineered to selectively target tumor-specific antigens, essential for metabolic reactivation of dormant cancer cells. Based on our preclinical evidence and published literature, FREZENT’s therapeutics can be used in combination with standard of care to achieve durable remission in head and neck cancer, osteosarcoma and pancreatic cancer. In the future, our therapeutics will potentially be used as maintenance therapy to ensure recurrence-free survival.