Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Thomas Chen, Founder, CEO, and CSO of NeOnc Technologies, is working on the challenge of delivering drugs across the blood-brain barrier by using an intranasal delivery approach to target brain cancers. This delivery platform leverages the cranial nerve to transport the drugs directly to the brain, bypassing the blood-brain barrier. Genomic analysis of the long-surviving patients in the phase one trial revealed a common genetic mutation, informing the trial design for the next phase. Thomas explains, "So our platform is what we call intranasal delivery. And with the intranasal delivery, we're not trying to cross the blood-brain barrier. We're trying to cross over it. And how we're doing that is doing the delivery of the drug via what we call the C nerves. Now the cranial nerves are, we have 12 cranial nerves in our brain. These cranial nerves have various functions, but the cranial nerves involved with the nasal brain delivery are the first and the fifth cranial nerves. The first cranial nerve is what we