Jonathan Northrup, Co-founder and CEO The immune system fights cancer through two synergistic arms, adaptive immunity and innate immunity. Existing checkpoint inhibitors all work through the adaptive arm, but their effect is poor when tumors suppress innate immunity. Stingray is targeting ENPP1, an enzyme cancer can use to disable that innate response.
“The immune system only works well to kill cancers when both arms, adaptive and innate, are active, and can synergize together,” says Jonathan Northrup, Co-founder and CEO.
Reopening the Innate Pathway
Innate immunity is present in every cell and surveys for foreign DNA associated with infection and cancer. When detected, the cGAS-STING pathway produces a STING agonist that triggers interferon and activates natural killer cells. That response can begin within about an hour. The resulting inflammation also alerts adaptive immunity and draws T cells and antibodies into the tumor, bringing innate and adaptive immunity together for maximum immune response.
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The immune system only works well to kill cancers when both arms, adaptive and innate, are active, and can synergize together.
Vizenpistat is Stingray’s next-generation innate immune checkpoint inhibitor developed for that purpose. While adaptive checkpoint inhibitors such as PD-1, PD-L1, CTLA-4 and LAG-3 are already established, no innate immune checkpoint inhibitor is currently marketed. That distinction defines the space Stingray is pursuing, with the most advanced, best-in-class innate immune checkpoint inhibitor.
As per estimates, innate immunity is suppressed in about half of cancers, including colorectal, breast, lung, pancreatic, prostate, ovarian and brain cancers. That breadth shapes a strategy to determine where restoring innate immunity can complement established cancer treatments and make immune therapy work in far more tumors.
Early Evidence Guides the Next Step
Stingray is studying Vizenpistat in metastatic colorectal cancer, including disease that has spread to the liver. Liver metastases occur in about 70 percent of metastatic colon cancer patients, making control at that site especially important with no current therapies working well.
Stingray reports encouraging activity in holding back or diminishing liver metastases while clearing eight dose levels without any significant dose-limiting toxicities. That tolerability matters because Vizenpistat has added toxicity when used with other therapies.
That creates room to investigate the drug in combinations that restore innate immunity while another set of treatments activates adaptive immunity. Current and planned work extends across adaptive checkpoint inhibitors, ionizing and targeted radiation, PARP inhibition and chemotherapy, testing promising potential synergies across multiple treatment settings.
More than $20 million in non-dilutive funding has helped move the program from discovery into clinical development. Support has included the National Cancer Institute and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Stingray views that backing as scientific validation of the mechanism while it continues generating clinical evidence.
Building Evidence across Cancer Therapies
The next phase is centered on demonstrating Vizenpistat’s potential across several treatment combinations and selected tumors. Stingray is also evaluating additional indications such as prostate, anal, hepatocellular, osteosarcoma, and other cancers while it builds a broad clinical package around ENPP1 inhibition.
That work is intended to build evidence for how broadly Vizenpistat could be studied. Stingray wants a larger pharmaceutical company to evaluate the drug across many trials and cancer types. Its recognition as the Most Innovative and Promising Immune Oncology Company 2026 reflects that development path. After a decade, the priority remains defining how restoring innate immunity can contribute to benefiting cancer patients.
