California-based NEONC Technologies has announced plans for clinical trials of its NEO100 intranasal formulation of monoterpene perillyl alcohol (POH) for the treatment of gliomas and other CNS cancers. NEONC Chairman and CEO Thomas Chen, who is also Co-Director of the USC/Norris Neuro-Oncology Program and Professor of Neurological Surgery and Pathology at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, will lead the study.
NEONC has a licensing agreement with Kurve Technologies for the delivery device, which NEONC says “effectively disrupts inherent nasal cavity airflows to deliver formulations to the entire nasal cavity, the olfactory region, and the par nasal sinuses.” Kurve describes its ViaNase device as an “electronic atomizer.”
According to Chen, “Clinical research using intranasal delivery of POH in patients with recurrent malignant gliomas has resulted in a statistically significant increase in survival for patients with primary or secondary brain cancers. Our vision is to become the pharmaceutical leader in the promising technique of nasal brain delivery, which bypasses the blood-brain barrier and can greatly decrease the side effects of anti-cancer medication.”
The company cites a previous study of intranasal POH in Brazil in which patients with recurrent malignant glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) treated with the drug survived an average of 5.9 months compared to 2.3 months for a control group and experienced minimal side effects.
Read the NEONC press release.
