Vision gets worse with age, so LENZ Therapeutics wants to be young again to get a clearer view of the future for its late-stage eyedrop candidate.
The San Diego-based biopharmaceutical re-emerged Thursday after saying goodbye to the name Presbyopia Therapies. The company also announced a new CEO and a fresh start with $47 million in funding to bring its aceclidine eye drop for improving near vision to market with an FDA submission.
LENZ is working off Presbyopia’s eyedrop, which showed significant rapid and long-lasting improvements in near vision in a phase 2 trial. The eyedrop is based on the formulation of aceclidine, which has been used in Europe for glaucoma and causes pupil contraction to create a pinhole effect to strengthen close-up vision.
Presbyopia, named after the farsightedness condition for which the company focused on, presented data on the phase 2 58-patient study in July 2018. At that point, Chief Scientific Officer Gerald Horn, M.D., had said the data “warrant rapid future clinical development.”
But the company remained largely silent from that data presentation until now. Horn, one of Presbyopia’s founders, has since become the CEO of a “cerebral beverage” company, called Breinfuel. Presbyopia's other founder, Lee Nordan, M.D., died in December 2015.
LENZ now has funding from Versant Ventures and RA Capital Management, plus a new leader fresh off a 2020 M&A exit. Eef Schimmelpennink joins from Pfenex, which he led as CEO to a $516 million acquisition by Ligand Pharmaceuticals last year. He was also previously CEO of Alvotech.
“Fueled by its Phase 2 success, I believe the company has a potential best-in-class asset that uniquely positions it to capitalize on the emerging presbyopia therapeutics market. I see a great opportunity for LENZ Therapeutics to be a leader in what many see as the largest untapped ophthalmology market,” said Schimmelpennink in a statement.
Versant Managing Director Clara Ozawa, Ph.D., and RA Capital Principal Zach Scheiner, Ph.D., will join the board of LENZ.
“We have followed this space for some time and believe LENZ is developing a potentially best-in-class eyedrop solution for presbyopia, a consequence of aging that nearly all of us will face,” Scheiner said in a statement. The condition affects more than 120 million people in the U.S. and nearly 2 billion people worldwide, the company said.
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LENZ is not alone in attempting to give people better vision.
Last month, Johnson & Johnson won approvals for its intraocular lenses, meant to replace impaired lenses and treat farsightedness, in the U.S. and Canada. In January, Alcon commercially launched its presbyopia-mitigating lens in the U.S. Alcon bought fluid-based intraocular lens implant maker PowerVision for $285 million in March 2019.
Israeli biotech Orasis Pharmaceuticals raised $30 million for late-stage tests of its own presbyopia eye drop treatment in September.