OncoNano Medicine is developing a new class of products that exploit universal cancer and immune therapeutic targets to diagnose and treat cancer. Our product candidates are designed to help patients across the continuum of cancer care and include solid tumor therapeutics, agents for real-time image-guided surgery, and T cell activating immunotherapies.

Our core technology is comprised of ultra pH-sensitive polymeric micelles that have been engineered to encapsulate and protect a wide variety of payloads, and selectively release them upon exposure to acidic biological environments within tumors and endosomes. Imaging and therapeutic payloads can be encapsulated
in the micelles for systemic administration to specifically target the acidic tumor microenvironment – a hallmark of all solid tumors (the Warburg effect) – while minimizing exposure to normal tissues. Use of pH as a biomarker for cancer
enables micelles to be applied generally to any solid tumor, regardless of its oncogenic phenotype and has been demonstrated in numerous in vivo models and in patients.

In addition to therapeutic delivery, proprietary micelle compositions are developed to activate Stimulator of Interferon Genes (STING), a ubiquitous immune signaling molecule for T cell therapy of solid tumors. Non-canonical STING activation is achieved through polyvalency in an unprecedented and advantageous manner. The combination of the natural STING ligand cGAMP with STING-activating polymers further synergizes innate immune activation leading to highly efficacious T cell immunity against solid cancers.

Key to the success of OncoNano’s polymeric micelle technology is the molecular cooperativity design that achieves threshold pH sensing and STING activation, thereby enabling high specificity in tumor targeting not possible with conventional therapeutic and imaging approaches.