NeuroOne Medical Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: NMTC) has announced a collaboration with Mayo Clinic to support a research program targeting pediatric diffuse midline glioma (DMG), one of the most aggressive childhood brain cancers. The study, funded by a grant from the Children's Cancer Research Fund (CCRF) to Mayo Clinic investigators Dr. David Daniels and Dr. Liang Zhang, aims to address a key challenge in brain tumor treatment: maintaining therapeutic drug concentrations within the tumor after delivery.
Convection-enhanced delivery (CED) allows drugs to bypass the blood-brain barrier through direct intracranial infusion, but therapeutic benefit is often limited by rapid drug clearance from the treatment site. The Mayo Clinic team will evaluate a combination therapy strategy designed to modulate drug efflux mechanisms, potentially prolonging drug retention and therapeutic exposure following localized delivery. The project will begin with large animal studies, with the possibility of expanding to human trials if successful.
Central to the research is NeuroOne's investigational drug delivery neural device technology, which combines precision intracranial drug delivery with simultaneous neural recording. This integrated approach enables targeted therapy while providing real-time physiologic monitoring, offering investigators insights into drug delivery and its effects on the surrounding neural environment. The CCRF award marks a milestone for advancing this approach toward clinical evaluation and reflects growing interest in NeuroOne's drug delivery platform from academic investigators and biopharmaceutical companies.
David Wambeke, Chief Business Officer of NeuroOne, stated: "This collaboration with Mayo Clinic represents another important milestone in the continued expansion of our drug delivery platform. We believe our technology has the potential to become an enabling platform for targeted intracranial therapies by combining precision drug delivery with real-time neural recording."
The collaboration expands NeuroOne's portfolio of drug delivery initiatives, which is part of the company's broader strategy to improve surgical care for neurological disorders. NeuroOne markets FDA-cleared products including Evo® Cortical Electrodes, Evo® sEEG Electrodes, OneRF® Ablation System, and OneRF® Trigeminal Nerve Ablation System. The company is also engaged in research for basivertebral nerve ablation and spinal cord stimulation programs. More information is available at nmtc1.com.
This research could have significant implications for pediatric brain cancer treatment, offering hope for more effective therapies against DMG, which currently has limited treatment options. The integration of drug delivery with neural recording may also advance understanding of brain tumor biology and treatment response.
