Eyestem Research, a clinical-stage biotechnology company, has raised $10 million in a Series B funding round led by Raju Barwale and Sandeep Singh, managing director of Alkem Laboratories.
Alkem Lab., Biological E, and C-CAMP had previously contributed $9.95 million to the Bengaluru-based company.
According to a press release from Eyestem, the money will be used to finish the current Phase 2 clinical trial in India and help with the process of submitting an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Jogin Desai, Rajani Battu, and Rajarshi Pal co-founded Eyestem Research in 2015 with the goal of creating cell replacement treatments for debilitating eye conditions. The organization’s research on dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is well-known. It is creating a treatment called Eyecyte-RPE that replaces damaged retinal cells with retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells.
For patients with geographic atrophy (GA) brought on by dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD), Eyestem reports that Eyecyte-RPE is currently under development. The business is awaiting approval to start Phase 2 after submitting its Phase 1 clinical study report to the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO).
According to the company, Eyecyte-RPE may facilitate tissue regeneration in the diseased retina by replacing lost or damaged retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells. This special formulation is scalable, allogeneic, and long-lasting when kept in a frozen vial.
The most common cause of blindness in adults over 50 is dry AMD. The death of cells in the macula, the central region of the retina, is a hallmark of geographic atrophy (GA), an advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) that causes a progressive and irreversible loss of central vision. Five million of the approximately 196 million people who have dry AMD worldwide also have GA.
Voyager Therapeutics and Lineage Cell Therapeutics are the other prominent companies in this field.
