foreign to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with investing News Network my guest this episode is David Reagan CEO of Sona nanotech based in Halifax Nova Scotia and we're talking about new breakthroughs in nanotechnology and its application in the medical field hello David Hi Marilyn thanks for having me today yes good to have you let's start a conversation just with an overview of Sona nanotech and your company's value proposition sure so Sona nanotech has proprietary technology for the


manufacture of a particular type of nanoparticle and it's one that is uniquely biocompatible and that's really important because increasingly we're seeing nanotechnology applications in the medical field and so when one starts thinking about the the possibility of nanomaterials being injected in the body biocompatibility is Para right so can we just have a little maybe just a little bit of a conversation about nanotechnology and what it makes what makes it an interesting area of research


in the medical field sure so you know nanotechnology very um uh interesting area a lot of developments in that area over the last 20 years a ton of research that's got into it but fundamentally what it's about of course is manipulating materials at the near atomic scale and when you when you take materials down to that small size uh uh the properties can change in important ways and they can be they can be utilized for different functions in different ways that um that provide a lot of novelty and a lot of


utility so for instance the whole idea that these particles that are so small uh that they can be fused to molecules cells various drugs Etc um and be used as a carrier for those moleculars and then can therefore be activated from external signals in the body opens up some pretty exciting sophisticated medical app locations that we're going to see in the future that the the things of Science Fiction that we've seen in the past and we all know that uh that you know this is where medicine is eventually going to go where


it's much more precise and that's what we're trying to enable with our targeted hyperthermia therapy right and you've alluded to the term biocompatibility earlier so for our viewers who um are not familiar with that term why is that important for your research and for your technology sure so many people make nanoparticles and they're being used by researchers all around the world and Commercial Enterprises as well for industrial applications medical applications we make one particular type we make


several but we make one in particular a gold Nano Rod now in order to manufacture a gold narrow rod do you do it using chemistry given its small scale but it's taking a nanoparticle and elongated now others who have to go through that process use a toxic substance to do that which is fine if you're using the materials ultimately for some industrial application but if you want to use them to put them in the body for nanomedical applications it's just not going to work it's you know arguably uh too dangerous to be


doing that when it's a known toxin you don't want to be injecting that into the body our patented in one country and pending another's proprietary technology allows us to elongate those uh those nanoparticles into Nano rods without the use of those toxins now why why elongate them what's the purpose of that by doing an elongation of the uh of the gold nanoparticle you get an aspect ratio so width versus versus length that allows one to tune it to an external signal such as a near-infrared light device


that is tuned to the same wavelength that allows us to Signal those those nanoparticles once they're implanted in uh in for instance cancerous tumor which is our the intention of our therapy right so let's talk about that therapy the THD technology you're developing can you talk a bit more about that what therapy is targeted for and uh sort of the where it's at right now so sure and my background for that obviously we're all familiar with the um uh the Three core uh uh technologies that are used


currently in in fighting cancer in terms of uh chemo uh radiation uh you know therapies and you could also add surgery to that um each one of those things have side effects there's collateral damage so you know where we hope to be moving is a as an industry is towards doing less damage and doing more good at the same time uh our therapeutes call targeted hyperthermia therapy and that's exactly what uh what it is targeted to achieve and what the data we have and the studies we have shows that it will do


um now how it works and specifically is that these gold Nano rods are injected into the tumor either intravenously or directly into the tumor once they're in the tumor with the application of a near-infrared light source close to them that near-infrared lice that light passes harmlessly as non-thermal energy radiation through the uh healthy tissue without doing damage but when it hits the gold Nano rods the golden Nano rods convert the radiation to heat therefore heating the tumor From the Inside Out heat kills cancer now the


other thing that's interesting about cancer cells is that they're more susceptible to heat than regular cells so if as we as we aim to do um uh are able to hold the heat at 44 degrees Celsius you know think about a human's body temperatures 37 36 37 but take it up to 30 to 44 you're still not doing real damage uh assuming it's not done for terribly long period of time to the healthy cells but at 44 degrees you can kill cancer cells you don't start killing the healthy cells until above


50. so the idea here is we heat a tumor from the inside out and we're we're killing the cancer cells selectively of a real Precision treatment that we think can be uh really useful particularly when there are comorbid entities in a given patient the elderly for instance where you may not want to undertake a surgery with a resection some of the particular colorectal cancers we're focusing on um you know really have poor outcomes because it it's very often that the patient uh is faced with a resection


taking out a section of the the colon or the rectum entirely for the rest of their lives and being forced to live with a colostomy bag um that's an area where where we think our our therapy could have a big big impact on quality of life right that's interesting and you as you said you're currently focused on colorectal cancer is there any particular reason why you're focusing on this type of cancer right now sure uh two specific reasons one this type of therapy We Believe will work in


the types of tumors that uh that uh tend to be in colorectal um where those tumors have what we call a leaky vascular system um there's an epr effect that enhanced permutation retention effect that results in the gold nanorods aggregating in those tumors on a seven to one ratio relative to unhealthy tissue so you really get a good strong concentration of the tumors that's that's number one number two is of course we're looking at where can we achieve the biggest impact on quality of life and right now for


rectal rectal cancer in particular uh way too often the outcome is uh is a complete resection and and you know I tell the story of uh and and doing work with a colorectal oncology ontological surgeon and um here that uh he passed on the story of having a 40 year old come in and uh and him having to let him know that look you know we've got to do a complete resection and that's it there are no other options for you and there's a 40 year old could not believe that to be the case colorectal cancer by the way


um is becoming more prevalent it's also becoming more prevalent at younger ages so it's an important area to to really focus in on we think this therapy could work in other cancers but this is where we'd see the beach head and where we could gain momentum in our our initial applications would be in in that area and that could be a good segue to your recent uh press release about a new uh clinical trial or new study of your therapy that will look at other cancers in addition to colorectal can you talk a


bit more about that sure it's a pre-clinical study um and we're very fortunate to be working with an eminent uh researcher surgical oncologist uh Dr Carmen Jack of Antonio who's done a great deal of work in the immunotherapy world in terms of his research um when when we got together we like to say that it was a little bit of Worlds colliding our world of nanotechnology his research world of immunotherapy and it's when those Worlds Collide that oftentimes Innovation can occur because


you can see things from a different perspective what we found is that that our targeted hyperthermia therapy could meld really ideally with particular immunotherapies to enhance them and really create a Synergy where you're getting a a one-two punch that uh that provides um a much more powerful treatment um for um for cancer treatment right so you've uh done a pretty good job explaining you know to our viewers you know nanotechnology as from the as its application in the medical field and


you know the therapies that you're developing why should an investor now be interested in you know nanotechnology and in particular why should they invest in your company well I mean this is obviously Cutting Edge stuff and this is this is innovation is where where growth uh growth happens and we are I'm happy to say very much on The Cutting Edge but not on the bleeding edge there's been a ton of research as I mentioned that have gone into um into both the use of the manipulation of nanoparticles


um and a great deal of work obviously on on immune immunotherapies um for for cancer patients um with that data and that background and the number of peer-reviewed Journal studies that have been done by researchers all around the world we're really standing on their shoulders and standing on the shoulders of that research to say look this is incredible information uh how can we now bring it together and operationalize it for a therapy that will do good that will really you know create um an enhancement over what is currently


done I was shocked frankly when we first started looking into this that given how much knowledge there is in this space that no one has yet uh been able to commercialize this and no one we discovered had the right elements uh we're bringing Together We Believe those right elements we have the gold Nano rods that are biocompatible that's a really key element of it we're developing this uh near infrared light device that I talked about which will be used to um to to activate uh the gold


Nano rods when we look at the challenges we have in front of us a lot of us it's not so much the science the science is proven out in journals by many researchers around the world but there are operational things what does the dosage look like what is the time period for the therapy look like you know how do you get the light source into where the tumor is how long do you keep it there uh Etc it's these factors you know lots of variables but we've got some promising data now and um and this is an


exciting area particularly with this new study that we've announced and the idea that they'll be um we hope to have initial results in um in within three months on right I'm interested to um get your thoughts on you know you've alluded to some of the challenges you know with for all its potential to change the face of medicine right nanotechnology what do you see are some of the challenges or gaps that could be preventing the technology from reaching its full potential and how are


those being addressed sure well you know uh The Regulators are are the Arbiters of um of what is considered safe and what isn't and in order to convince them you have to have a mountain of data to support it and show it now the good news is that in the U.S in particular the FDA uh they released their their nanotechnology uh uh guidelines and viewpoints in 2017 this is something they're very much ahead of because they knew this is an area that shows great promise for enhancing human life and Longevity


um in fact they went so far as to co-found an entity called the the nanotechnology characterization laboratory they co-founded that with the National Cancer Institute in the U.S and we've been very fortunate to be working with that entity who have been vetting our materials and we've had a couple of announcements on the results they've come back with because the key factor here is safety you know we need to understand where is the bioaccumulation once these absolutely tiny near Atomic sized


particles are implanted in the body what does the clearance look like uh from what we understand so far the clearance is it has a half-life in the body of between an hour and 24 hours really good clearance frankly it the body flushes it through and of course because our Nano rods are made with gold they are uh you know what's an uh I'd say um it's an inert material and we think can can serve response very well there are also questions of reactivity what um what can it react with you've got to study this


uh in in many many ways to understand the full profile we've got great studies in small animals we've got some more coming up as we've announced uh the next stage would go to larger animals likely swine uh to be able to uh to prove it out in something closer to him than before before applying for a so-called IDE investigational device exemption from the FDA that would lead which would lead to clinical trials at that point right really interesting to learn about this technology and I guess


any any new innovation that you know that will ultimately solve some of our biggest Healthcare and medical challenges is really you know welcome development thanks for joining and sharing your insights today David Rylan thank you very much for the time happy to talk cheers thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO insights and if you like this video subscribe to our YouTube channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss new updates and interviews


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