Sanovas Awarded U.S. Patent for Treatment of Hypoxic Tumors with Localized Oxygenation

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., July 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ­Sanovas, Inc., (www.sanovas.com) San Rafael, CA. U.S.A and Suzhou, China, an internationally-recognized, privately-financed biomedical device development company, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued patent 9,694,075 for the company's Systems and Methods for the Treatment of Hypoxic Tumors with Localized Oxygenation.

This formative patent covers broad claims protecting Sanovas' Minimally Invasive Nano Oncology System (MINOS™) that enables clinicians to measure tumor pathophysiology and to reverse hypoxia in therapy resistant tumors, in real time. The MINOS system provides intra-tumoral diagnostics in combination with the direct injection of oxygenating agents into hypoxic cancer tissues to sensitize the tumor microenvironment to chemotherapy and radiation therapy.  This unique system enables the precise positioning of localized therapies to very small diameter, less than 1 millimeter, anatomic sites in the periphery of the lung and throughout the body, while mitigating systemic toxicities and undesired side effects.

"This system is highly important and most useful for the early detection, imaging and therapeutic treatment of pulmonary and other neoplasms," stated Zhen Cheng PhD, Associate Professor of Radiology and the Molecular Imaging Program at the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection, the Bio-X Program and the Stanford Cancer Center at Stanford University.

The technology makes cancer cells highly susceptible to destruction and death by radiation or photodynamic therapy. MINOS allows physicians to measure the partial-pressure of oxygen and other biomarkers in the tumor microenvironment. This diagnostic intelligence, when combined with the deposition of hypoxia reversing, oxygenating chemo-therapeutic agents directly into hypoxic cancer tissues sensitizes, otherwise resistant, cancers to radiation or photodynamic therapy. "The potential to utilize locoregional tumor ablation technologies, especially in the thorax, has been limited by the size and poor maneuverability of devices. It is one thing to kill the cell, it is quite another to kill it and at the same time augment tumor antigen presentation. In an era where oncology is embracing immunotherapy with systemic therapies, why not ablate tumor anywhere in the thorax and augment immunotherapy?" stated Gordon Downie MD, PhD, Director of Interventional Pulmonology at Titus Regional Medical Center and Clinical Professor of Medicine, LSU-Shreveport.

"MINOS is a comprehensive treatment technique that points to the future of precision medicine and to treating therapy resistant cancers," related Larry Gerrans, the patent's author and the President and CEO of Sanovas. "This is a new therapeutic solution with a strong potential to improve cancer treatments, prolong survival and save millions of lives, globally."

Hypoxia is a condition of tumor pathophysiology wherein cancerous tumors lack oxygen at their cellular level. As a cancer grows, it rapidly outgrows its blood supply and, thus, its oxygen supply. To support its continuous growth and proliferation in oxygen deprived, hypoxic environments cancer cells alter their metabolism and change their behavior. They remodel and become more transient, resulting in increased migratory and metastatic behavior. The presence of oxygen is necessary to facilitate the transport of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy to the nucleus of a cancer cell to kill its DNA.

Hypoxia limits the impact of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Oxygenation opens the door to localized high dose chemo and radiation therapy having maximal effect with very limited or no local and systemic side effects. Done with minimally invasive technologies, MINOS can be used when open surgery or external beam radiation would be detrimental or even contraindicated to the patient with other disease entities such as chronic pulmonary disease or heart failure. "Hypoxic cancers harbor a major challenge in treatment. Immune surveillance is largely ineffective for many tumors. Having a war chest of nanotechnologies to access surgical sites with minimal invasion to ablate tumor and augment tumor immunotherapy is a game changer," Remarked Rosa Cuenca MD, Surgical Oncologist, Director of The Diagnostic Center, Titus Regional Medical Center, and Clinical Professor of Surgery, LSU Shreveport.

"Sanovas' MINOS technology provides doctors with a set of excellent precision tools to defeat invasive cancers. The advent of CT scanning for early lung cancer means many patients are being detected when the tumor is still small and curable. This new technology allows for minimally invasive approaches to diagnosis and treatment – all done with minimal side effects and maximum patient comfort," stated Stephen C. Schimpff, MD former CEO of the University of Maryland Medical Center, past Chair of the Board of Governors of The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), renowned healthcare author and thought leader.

About Sanovas  

Sanovas, Inc. is a life science company commercializing breakthrough medical technologies to save lives.

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