NeOnc Technologies announces preclinical findings from USC collaboration

NeOnc Technologies (NTHI) announced newly published preclinical findings from a research collaboration at the University of Southern California. The study, now available on bioRxiv, demonstrates that ultrasound further enhances and amplifies NEO100’s therapeutic potency, driving strong antitumor effects across multiple primary and metastatic brain tumor types. Utilizing an AI-driven, 3D-bioprinted New Approach Methodology, researchers at USC, led by Dr. Josh Neman-Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery and Chief Clinical Officer of NTHI-identified NEO100 as a leading sonodynamic therapy agent. This NAM platform-built on NTHI-patented rapid magnetic 3D bioprinting technology-facilitates the rapid generation of physiologically relevant patient-derived tumor organoids within hours, rather than the weeks typically required by conventional methods, thereby significantly accelerating biomedical research and aligning with NIH objectives to minimize animal testing. An AI-driven positive-unlabeled neural network, trained on over 200 molecular descriptors, was employed to predict compounds most likely to respond to focused ultrasound, penetrate the blood-brain barrier, and exhibit potent sonodynamic therapeutic activity. Throughout this extensive AI screening initiative, the platform consistently identified NEO100 as a leading predicted sonosensitizer. Validation studies on rapidly bioprinted tumor spheroids-including glioblastoma, pediatric medulloblastoma, high-grade meningioma, and breast- and lung-to-brain metastases-demonstrated that NEO100 displayed markedly enhanced tumor-killing activity when combined with focused ultrasound parameters. Together, these results support moving NEO100 combined with focused ultrasound into future clinical trials for a wide range of primary and metastatic brain tumors.