Visus Therapeutics established to develop and commercialize innovative treatments to improve vision

Visus Therapeutics™, a company backed by Planet Innovation, has started a clinical development program for a novel eye drop designed to restore the loss of near vision associated with aging.

Visus Therapeutics is a U.S.-based clinical-stage company developing innovative medicines to improve vision for people around the world. Visus’s lead product candidate is BRIMOCHOL™, a prescription eye drop to treat Presbyopia.

Presbyopia is the loss of near vision associated with aging and is the most common cause of vision impairment among adults¹. Presbyopia typically begins when adults are in their 40s and becomes almost universal by age 50². Currently there are no FDA-approved medications for presbyopia.

Ben Bergo, Visus co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, said Visus was addressing a tremendous unmet need in the eye care segment.

“The majority of people will be afflicted by presbyopia in their lifetime, and will therefore struggle with simple, everyday activities like reading a menu in a restaurant or using a mobile phone,” Ben said.

“We are very excited to advance the clinical development program for BRIMOCHOL with the hope of bringing the therapy to market and helping restore near vision for millions of adults globally.”

Visus was established in late 2019 to commercialize intellectual property acquired as part of the merger of PI spin-out company Lumos Diagnostics and RPS Diagnostics.

Visus recently completed the acquisition of all patent assets underpinning the development of BRIMOCHOL, which is based on pioneering research led by Herb Kaufman, M.D., a celebrated ophthalmologist who is responsible for more than 15 landmark innovations in the field of eye care and beyond.

BRIMOCHOL combines two well-studied, FDA-approved pharmaceuticals: carbachol and brimonidine tartrate. Five clinical studies have been conducted evaluating the safety and efficacy of BRIMOCHOL. In the most recent clinical study of 57 patients, BRIMOCHOL demonstrated statistically significant improvement in near visual acuity of a 5 Jaeger-line or greater gain, with the effect lasting at least 12 hours. The same study found that BRIMOCHOL was well tolerated with no reports of headache or brow-ache in this proprietary combination³. Phase II trials are slated to commence in early 2021.

Dr. Rhett Schiffman, Visus co-founder, Chief Medical Officer and Head of Research and Development, said: “The previously published clinical studies and our own extensive non-clinical studies demonstrate that this proprietary formulation supports a robust and extended duration of effect of 8-12 hours^3,4.

“The data also suggest that, unlike other combination drop candidates in this space, pivotal studies of BRIMOCHOL are expected to demonstrate that the individual drugs will contribute significantly to the overall effect of the combination product on near visual acuity.”

Sam Lanyon, Planet Innovation co-CEO and non-executive director of Visus, said he was excited about the market potential of Visus.

“Visus has an experienced team that brings deep ophthalmology expertise to drive innovation for patients with presbyopia. This, combined with their market knowledge and commercial acumen, gives me great confidence in their ability to progress through this next stage of trials and bring BRIMOCHOL to market.”

For more information visit the Visus website.

References
1 Khandelwal, S. ‘Study reveals significant worldwide burden from uncorrected presbyopia.’ American Academy of Opthalmology
2 US Census data, www.census.gov, accessed 7 September, 2019.
3 Abdelkader Int. J. Ophthalmic Res 2019 September; 5(1): 317-320
4 Abdelkader and Kaufman Eye and Vision (2016) 3:31