Therapeutics nabs $36M for presbyopia-correcting eye drop

Nicole DeFeudis

Associate Editor

Vi­s­us Ther­a­peu­tics is off to a bit of a late start in the race for a ther­a­peu­tic al­ter­na­tive to read­ing glass­es. But with an added $36 mil­lion in the bank, CEO Ben Bergo is eye­ing a quick Phase II launch for the com­pa­ny’s dou­ble-agent eye drops.

Bergo co-found­ed Vi­s­us back in 2019, af­ter se­cur­ing the patents to the com­pa­ny’s lead can­di­date Brimo­chol from an­tivi­ral pi­o­neer Herb Kauf­man. The mi­otic-based eye drop for pres­by­opia is a com­bi­na­tion of two FDA-ap­proved phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals: car­ba­chol (mar­ket­ed as Mio­stat) and bri­moni­dine tar­trate.

What makes Brimo­chol dif­fer­ent from oth­er sin­gle-agent mi­otics is the ad­di­tion of bri­moni­dine tar­trate, Bergo told End­points News. Mi­otic agents like car­ba­chol con­strict the pupil to in­duce what’s called the “pin­hole ef­fect.” Sim­i­lar to re­duc­ing the aper­ture of a cam­era, shrink­ing the pupil brings near im­ages in­to clear­er fo­cus.

But of­ten­times, pa­tients who take sin­gle-agent mi­otics re­port headache or brow ache, my­opic shift, eye red­ness, or a loss of dis­tance vi­su­al acu­ity, Bergo said. Bri­moni­dine damp­ens those ef­fects.

“Bri­moni­dine in­hibits the con­trac­tion of the cil­iary mus­cle, which means that we don’t end up with this my­opic shift,” the CEO said. “Pa­tients end up with a drug that gives them this meio­sis, this pin­hole ef­fect, with­out the un­want­ed side ef­fects.”

Bergo said the drops promise long-last­ing ef­fects, cit­ing pri­or stud­ies which sug­gest the ef­fect could last at least eight hours.

“We see this hav­ing the po­ten­tial to be an all-day pres­by­opia-cor­rect­ing eye drop,” he said. “Imag­ine you wake up in the morn­ing, you put the drop in — you know 7 am or so, 8 am — you go to work, and you’re still ob­vi­ous­ly ben­e­fit­ing from this im­prove­ment in your vi­su­al acu­ity all the way through your work­day, through un­til the evening.”

Vi­s­us plans to en­ter Brimo­chol in a short Phase II study with 40 pa­tients this quar­ter and read out topline da­ta at the end of Q2 2021. If all goes well, the biotech will launch piv­otal stud­ies in Q3 2021. The Se­ries A should take the com­pa­ny all the way through Phase II, and in­to two Phase III tri­als, Bergo said.

Vi­s­us isn’t out to re­place read­ing glass­es al­to­geth­er.

“I think some pa­tients may use an eye­drop such as our pre­dom­i­nant­ly and re­ly on read­ing glass­es on­ly in a very small sub­set of sit­u­a­tions,” he said. “Oth­er pa­tients may use their read­ing glass­es, say, on the week­end but use an eye­drop­per like ours through their work­week.”

Pres­by­opia is es­ti­mat­ed to af­fect 2.1 bil­lion peo­ple world­wide. But Vi­s­us has some catch­ing up to do if it wants to carve a place in that mar­ket. Ab­b­Vie readout pos­i­tive topline Phase III re­sults in Oc­to­ber for AGN-190584, a pres­by­opia can­di­date it in­her­it­ed in the Al­ler­gan buy­out. Ora­sis launched a Phase III tri­al for its own pres­by­opia can­di­date around that same time. And in a proof-of-con­cept study, 78% of pa­tients giv­en OS­RX Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ Eye Fo­cus main­tained 20/40 vi­sion for 8 hours.

John­son & John­son In­no­va­tion, RTW In­vest­ments, LP and Wille AG par­tic­i­pat­ed in Vi­s­us’ Se­ries A.