French biotech company Eyevensys has secured US$12m in funding to accelerate its programmes using a non-viral gene therapy ocular drug-delivery platform.
The platform is an electrotransfection system to deliver DNA plasmids encoding therapeutic proteins into the ciliary muscle, Eyevensys CEO Patricia Zilliox told Medgadget. This turns the eye into a biofactory, allowing the ciliary muscle to express and secrete the protein to the back of the eye at therapeutic levels for a duration of greater than six months, she explained.
In 2019 Eyevensys validated the technology’s safety for non-infectious uveitis in 18 patients through its EYS606 programme. This involved the production of a fusion protein that neutralises the activity of TNFα, a cytokine that has been shown to play a pivotal role in mediating intraocular inflammation.
This same delivery system will be used for Eyevensys’ EYS809 programme (for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration via expression of aflibercept and an antifibrotic/anti-angiogenic protein, decorin) and its EYS611 programme, which targets geographic atrophy and retinitis pigmentosa via the intraocular expression of transferrin, an endogenous antioxidant and neuroprotective protein, said Zilliox. “This funding support from Korea Investment Partners will allow us to demonstrate that treating ophthalmic conditions doesn’t have to be invasive and risky and that our approach is more convenient than other intraocular drug delivery approaches.”
For more, see https://www.eyeonoptics.co.nz/articles/archive/arvo-2021-highlights/
