Imagine if you could treat a serious eye disease with a simple pill instead of painful needles directly into your eye. This technology uses light to 'activate' a drug only once it reaches the retina, acting like a magnetic trap that pulls the medicine out of the blood. This means you can use a much smaller dose, making the treatment safer and easier for patients.
Current retinopathy treatments require invasive eye injections that cause adverse effects and create a high financial and logistical burden for patients and clinics.
A method to chemically modify VEGFR inhibitors to make them orally bioavailable and light-activatable. The project identified two lead candidate molecules and verified their efficacy in cellular systems.
If you are a drug development firm dealing with the high failure rate of ocular injections due to patient non-compliance — this project developed a chemical modification for VEGFR inhibitors that allows for oral administration. This reduces the need for outpatient clinic visits and lowers the risk of injection-related adverse effects.
If you are a biotech SME dealing with the challenge of delivering systemic drugs to the retina without causing body-wide toxicity — this project developed a photoactivation strategy that enriches compounds in retinal tissue. This allows for an extremely low plasma concentration while maintaining therapeutic efficacy in the eye.
If you are a clinic network dealing with the high operational burden of administering frequent intraocular injections — this project developed a path toward oral medications. This could significantly lower the direct and indirect financial burden associated with treating diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration.
The project has filed an international patent application PCT/HU2023/050073, published as WO 2024/095026 A1.
Based on available project data, specific cost figures are not provided, but the objective is to lower the direct and indirect financial burden of current treatment modalities.
Based on available project data, the project is currently preparing documentation for a human phase I clinical trial, meaning it is in the pre-clinical stage and not yet at industrial scale.
The project period runs until 2026-09-30, with the goal of having all results and documentation ready for a phase I clinical trial by project closure.
The compounds are activated through exposure to natural light or artificial irradiation, which tethers them to retinal target receptors.
The consortium is heavily industry-weighted with a 71% industry ratio, consisting of 5 SMEs, 1 university, and 1 research organization. This structure, involving 7 partners across 5 countries, suggests a strong focus on commercial viability and a direct pipeline from lab research to industrial application.
Contact EXPERIMENTICA OY in Finland for licensing and clinical trial collaboration.
Contact us to explore licensing opportunities for this photo-activated drug delivery platform.
