Every 5 seconds someone, somewhere in the world, goes blind. In the UK alone, 250 people a day begin to lose their sight. Re–Vana Therapeutics seeks to mitigate the rising tide of blindness worldwide by developing innovative ophthalmic ocular drug delivery therapeutics.
Studies show that of all the senses eyesight is the one people fear losing the most.
The biggest cause of blindness of those people over 55 years is wet AMD where central vision is lost; in young adults the biggest cause of blindness is diabetic retinopathy. Glaucoma is also a major cause of vision loss.
Treatments today for these diseases include either frequent injections into the eye – every month which involves a lot of travel and can be uncomfortable or has side effects, or topical eye drops where studies show up to 90% of people cannot use them correctly – they miss the eye, put the drug onto their cheeks or overdose by putting just too many drops into the eye.
The eye pharmaceutical market is worth about $22bn, injections alone are about $8bn and glaucoma eye drops $5bn. A significant market need is to develop long acting implants that can deliver drugs for 3 – 6 months or even longer – even up to a year or more. There’s a multi–billion–dollar opportunity to develop new sustained release release products for large and small molecules all from a single technology.
The solution to this worldwide problem is where Re–Vana Therapeutics comes in – we have developed proprietary biodegradable, polymer platforms, customized to develop new sustained release products with both large (biologics) and small molecules or drugs.
In fact we are the only company that can offer the delivery of large and small molecules from one single platform – we are also one of the few companies in the world who can deliver large biologics (large molecules) for 4 months or greater – a major technology break through.
In summary Re–Vana’s proprietary platform can be customized to achieve continuous drug delivery for 2–9 months providing opportunities for a portfolio of new advanced products in multi–billion–dollar markets.
Key Facts
- Also incorporated in the US.
- Agreed $2m term sheet with US Venture Capital focused company.
- Multiple discussions in place with major pharma companies for potential collaborations.