The company's platform creates drug microparticles large enough for tumor retention but with a massive surface area for sustained drug release. This is counterintuitive to typical engineering, where surface area is increased by making particles smaller, and it forms the basis of their intellectual property.
Historically, intratumoral therapy was limited by the physical difficulty of reaching tumors. The rise of a new discipline, Interventional Oncology, has largely solved this access problem. The critical bottleneck is now the lack of drugs specifically designed and optimized for local delivery and sustained retention within the tumor.
By delivering a high, sustained local drug concentration, Nenology's platform shifts cancer cell death from a passive process (apoptosis) to immunogenic cell death. This releases antigens that actively prime the immune system, creating a secondary anti-tumor effect and potentially boosting the efficacy of other immunotherapies.
For years, major pharmaceutical companies dismissed intratumoral therapy as "off strategy." This sentiment is now changing due to better tumor access and the urgent need for less toxic combination therapies. This market shift is creating new partnering interest in Nenology's platform after years of facing strategic objections.
By reformulating existing oncology drugs, Nenology uses the streamlined 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway, de-risking and accelerating development. Simultaneously, their composition-of-matter patents provide strong intellectual property protection typically associated with entirely new chemical entities, creating a unique strategic advantage.