Benzinga | Oct 16, 2020 08:09AM EDT

Beyond Air Presents New Preclinical Data For Use Of A Single Injection Of Gaseous Nitric Oxide As A Novel In situ Cancer Vaccination

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Oct. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Beyond Air, Inc. (NASDAQ:XAIR), a clinical-stage medical device and biopharmaceutical company focused on developing inhaled nitric oxide (NO) for the treatment of patients with respiratory conditions, including serious lung infections and pulmonary hypertension, and gaseous NO (gNO) for the treatment of solid tumors, today announced new in vitro and in vivo preclinical data that suggest the Company's innovative gNO-based treatment may treat lung cancer locally and its metastases systemically, potentially via stimulation of an anti-tumor immune response. These data were included in a presentation by Hila Confino, PhD of Beyond Air at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) North America Conference on Lung Cancer 2020 (NACLC 2020), which is being held from October 16th to 17th.



In a series of in vitro experiments, the mouse lung cancer cell line LLC1 was exposed to gNO at 10,000-50,000 ppm for up to 15 minutes. Compared with air controls, NO-treated lung cancer cells demonstrated dose- and time-dependent reductions in viability at gNO doses up to 20,000 ppm and dose-dependent apoptosis at doses up to 50,000 ppm, indicating a potential direct anticancer effect of gNO in this in vitro model.

In the in vivo study, mice with LLC1 tumors received a single 50,000 ppm intratumoral gNO treatment over 10 minutes. Up to 14 days after the gNO treatment, a metastasis model was induced in all gNO-treated tumor-bearing mice after treatment by challenging the mice with a second LLC1 cancer cell inoculation. For comparison, a group of na?ve mice also received the LLC1 inoculation. At day 5 all na?ve mice showed uptake of the challenge tumor while at day 9, none of the NO-treated mice showed uptake of the challenge tumor. No unanticipated mortality or signs indicating distress were noted in the animals.

Steve Lisi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Beyond Air, stated, "We are excited by the positive results of these studies, in which in vitro data indicate a cytotoxic effect of gNO on LLC1 lung cancer cells, and in vivo data demonstrated that 100% of gNO-treated tumor bearing mice rejected a subsequent tumor challenge, while 100% of the control group had challenge tumor uptake. We believe these promising data support the continued development of gNO as a novel treatment for primary and metastatic lung cancer."

The final version of the e-poster along with an accompanying audio presentation of the data will be available on the NACLC website at https://naclc2020.iaslc.org/ and on the Company's website (click here).