Nanobiotix CEO Discusses How Physics-Based Drug Delivery Could Improve Therapeutic Performance

As drug delivery technologies continue to evolve, developers are seeking new ways to improve how therapeutics reach their intended targets without introducing unnecessary complexity. According to Laurent Levy, founder and CEO of Nanobiotix, one promising approach is to rethink delivery challenges through the lens of physics rather than biology alone.

In a video interview with BioPharm International, Levy discussed the company's NanoPrimer platform and how it may complement a wide range of existing delivery technologies by influencing how therapeutic particles interact with the body.

How could a physics-based perspective improve drug delivery?

Levy noted that many delivery platforms become increasingly complex as developers attempt to improve targeting or other performance characteristics. While those modifications may optimize one aspect of a therapeutic, they can also introduce new biological interactions and tradeoffs.

"It's all about compromise. If you try to make a targeted LNP, you add complexity again to the object, and by adding complexity, you also add potential new interaction, unwanted interaction with the body."

Rather than focusing on redesigning the therapeutic itself, Levy said

NanoPrimer is intended to improve how delivery vehicles behave within the body. The discussion aligns with broader industry interest in improving the performance of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery systems for nucleic acid therapeutics, an area that has seen significant innovation in recent years. Levy described the technology as broadly applicable across multiple therapeutic modalities, including lipid nanoparticles, DNA- and RNA-based approaches, oncolytic viruses, and certain cell therapies.

According to Levy, the platform has demonstrated the ability to improve particle delivery across several technologies by changing the way developers think about delivery rather than requiring an entirely new therapeutic design.

Levy emphasized that this shift begins with perspective. Traditional biologic development typically evaluates therapies through biological characteristics such as receptor interactions, pharmacodynamics, and molecular structure. While those considerations remain essential, he believes developers can gain additional insight by also considering the physical properties of therapeutic particles.

Instead of asking only how a molecule functions biologically, Levy encouraged developers to examine characteristics such as particle size, surface properties, and how those features influence interactions within the body.

"If you look at the same object with a different perspective—what's the size of the object, what's the surface, how the surface is going to interact with the physics of the body—you see the object in a very different way."

That physics-based perspective, he said, can create new opportunities to optimize delivery while working alongside established biological approaches.

Ultimately, Levy does not see biology and physics as competing frameworks, but as complementary disciplines that together can improve therapeutic design.

Watch part 1 of our interview with Laurent Levy.

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