TREATING CANCER DIFFERENTLY

SonALAsense was founded to create hope in the face of despair with Sonodynamic Therapy (SDT), a non-invasive way to treat and eradicate deadly cancers like High-Grade Gliomas (HGG) that typically require debilitating brain surgery that often leads to tumor recurrence.

SDT uses SONALA-001 and an MR-guided focused ultrasound device, a true drug-device combination. Both drug and device are required for a therapeutic effect. The phase 0/1 clinical trial in Recurrent HGG gives us hope as we pursue our mission.

"Our mission is to transform patients into cancer survivors."

Glioma cells, bladder cancer cells, skin cancer cells and other cancer cells have been shown to have a special need for a compound called aminolevulinic acid (ALA). When these cancer cells were given large amounts of ALA, they glowed pink when exposed to blue light. This finding led to ALA becoming a commercially available product (Gleolan®) that is used as a visual aid by neurosurgeons to help them identify and surgically remove aggressive brain tumors. Another ALA product (Cysview®) is used by urologists to identify bladder cancer cells that are otherwise difficult to find.
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We knew more than 30 years ago that the same byproduct of ALA that made cancer cells glow could be activated to kill the cancer 

cells using high-energy light in a process called photodynamic therapy (PDT, see Our Science). PDT has a rapid onset of action and minimal effects on normal brain cells. Unfortunately, as we tried to develop PDT to treat brain tumors we found that it required invasive and complex light delivery techniques making it difficult to develop. When it was reported that the same PDT process could be activated noninvasively using MR-guided focused ultrasound to produce light within the brain (sonodynamic therapy, SDT), we founded SonALAsense to bring this new, noninvasive cancer-specific treatment to patients as soon as possible.

SonALAsense is developing SDT to treat multiple types of solid tumors.