The Light Fantastic: Why Invion’s Photodynamic Therapy May Be  Attracting Big Pharma’s Attention

Ask any oncologist about their greatest frustration, and the answer is rarely a lack of treatments — it’s a lack of treatments that work. Immunotherapy, the field’s crown jewel, has produced some of medicine’s most astonishing reversals. But those stories of remission come with a shadow: for the majority of patients facing the most aggressive cancers, the immune system is not an ally. It’s a bystander. These tumors have evolved a near-perfect camouflage, wrapping themselves in molecular silence so complete that the body’s defenders don’t even know there’s a war.

For Professor Thian Chew, Executive Chairman and CEO of ASX-listed Invion Limited (ASX: IVX), the solution to this impasse isn’t a more potent, expensive drug—it is light.

At the heart of Invion’s clinical strategy is its Photosoft™ platform, a next-generation photodynamic therapy (PDT). To the non-scientist investor, the breakthrough lies in how the drug identifies its target.

Cancer cells are metabolically hyperactive; they have an insatiable appetite for energy, a phenomenon known as the “Warburg effect.” Invion has engineered its core molecule by coating it with glucose conjugates. Because cancer cells prioritise the uptake of glucose, the drug naturally accumulates within the tumor and is rapidly cleared from healthy tissue.

“By itself, nothing happens,” Chew explains. “You must activate it by shining a specific frequency of light. Because it is highly localised within the cancer cells, it destroys the tumor while leaving the surrounding healthy cells intact.”

The current gold standard in oncology—immune checkpoint inhibitors—has revolutionised care, yet they suffer from a significant “blind spot.” Response rates for many patients hover around 12.5%. Furthermore, these treatments often come with price tags exceeding $300,000 USD, rendering them inaccessible to the vast majority of the global population.

Invion is positioning Photosoft™ not as a replacement, but as a force multiplier. Preclinical work with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre demonstrated that Photosoft™ could potentially boost the response rate of traditional immunotherapies from 12% to an impressive 80%.

Unlike biotech firms tied to a single, narrow indication, Invion is operating a “platform” model. By leveraging the universal nature of the Warburg effect, Photosoft™ is currently being validated across a broad spectrum of cancers—from skin and prostate to anal and esophageal.

This multi-pronged approach is supported by rigorous external validation. The company has secured FDA Orphan Drug Designation for anal cancer, a move that provides an accelerated regulatory pathway, and has attracted interest from pharmaceutical partners in Korea—supported by the Korean Drug Development Fund—to advance esophageal cancer programs. Additionally, the company is exploring veterinary applications, with Taiwan-listed Protect Animal Health funding programs for pets, demonstrating the versatility of the technology.

For investors, the narrative for Invion is shifting from “interesting science” to “execution.”

“We’ve cleaned up the legacy issues—the complicated license structures and share issues—and we’re starting from a solid foundation,” Chew notes. “Our challenge now is visibility.”

With multiple catalysts on the horizon over the next 6 to 12 months—including clinical data readouts across skin, anogenital, and esophageal cancer trials—Chew believes the company is currently undervalued compared to its clinical-stage peers.

Invion represents a rare proposition in the biotech space: a company aiming to solve “financial toxicity” by developing a scalable, small-molecule platform that doesn’t require the prohibitive costs of personalised, patient-specific therapies. As the company marches toward its next series of data milestones, Invion is looking to prove that the most powerful weapon in the war on cancer might just be a humble beam of light and unique photosensitive compounds.