11 October 2021 - - US-based biotechnology company OncoNano Medicine, Inc. has presented positive results from its preclinical study of ONM-501, a novel dual-activating polyvalent STING agonist for immuno-oncology applications, the company said.

The data, presented at The American Association for Cancer Research Virtual Conference on Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy, demonstrate strong efficacy in multiple tumor models.

According to the presentation, ONM-501 demonstrated antitumor efficacy in six different syngeneic mouse models from different tissues of origin (MC38, 4T1, TC-1, B16-F10, CT26 and A20).

The animals were treated intratumorally with ONM-501 as a monotherapy or in combination with PD-1 blockade. The findings indicate that ONM-501 demonstrated:

It showed strong antitumor efficacy across all tumor models tested as a mono or combo therapy, and significantly improved efficacy with increased complete response in several models when combined with PD-1 blockade.

OncoNano Medicine called it "a successful combination of a novel, proprietary STING activating micelle with the endogenous cGAMP potentially offers a synergistic immunotherapy strategy against cancer".

OncoNano Medicine is developing a new class of products that utilize principles of molecular cooperativity in their design to exploit pH as a biomarker to diagnose and treat cancer with high specificity.

Its product candidates and interventions are designed to help patients across the continuum of cancer care and include solid tumor therapeutics, agents for real-time image-guided surgery and a platform of immune-oncology therapeutics that activate and guide the body's immune system to target cancer.

OncoNano's lead development candidate is pegsitacianine, a novel fluorescent nanoprobe, that is currently under study in Phase 2 clinical trials as a real-time surgical imaging agent for use in multiple cancer surgeries.

ONM-501, OncoNano's second development program, is a next generation STING (STimulator of INterferon Genes) agonist that is advancing towards a first in human trial in the first half of 2023.

Pegsitacianine and ONM-501 have been supported by grants received from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas.