Over 30 years ago, our journey began with the aspiration to utilize high-energy light to activate a drug to kill cancer cells, in a process known as photodynamic therapy (PDT). However, the complexity and invasiveness of delivering light into tissue made commercialization challenging.

Then came a pivotal breakthrough: reports surfaced of preclinical animal brain tumor studies using noninvasive ultrasound to produce light which activated the PDT process within the brain cancer, causing the cancers to shrink and greatly extending the survival of the animal (#SonodynamicTherapy, SDT). Our scientific founder, Dr. Stuart Marcus, was able to optimize a single SDT treatment to significantly increase the survival of animals, and this discovery inspired the creation of SonALAsense Inc., to bring this new, noninvasive cancer-specific treatment to patients as soon as possible.

SonALAsense is the first company to advance sonodynamic therapy into clinical trials in brain tumors. We have demonstrated safety of SONALA-001, our intravenous formulation of aminolevulinic acid (ALA), together with ultrasound in the treatment of recurrent high-grade gliomas like glioblastoma and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.

We are thrilled to share the news of a $46MM award from ARPA-H, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to support the development of SONALA-001 sonodynamic therapy for the treatment of blood cancers.

We are grateful to ARPA-H, our team, our investors, and the patients and families who participated in our clinical trials.