Latest / Vanguards of Healthcare by Bloomberg Intelligence / Ocular Therapeutix Cuts Blindness Toll
Transcript
- 0:21Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Bloomberg Intelligence's Vanguards of Healthcare podcast,
- 0:26Speaker 1: where we speak with leaders at the forefront of change
- 0:29Speaker 1: in the healthcare sector. I'm in Hunter van Kirk, Senior
- 0:32Speaker 1: Biopharmaceuticals analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, the in house equity research
- 0:37Speaker 1: division of Bloomberg. I'm very pleased to be welcoming today's guest,
- 0:41Speaker 1: Praven Google, CEO of Ocular Therapeutics, Braven, thank you so
- 0:46Speaker 1: much for being here.
- 0:47Speaker 2: With us today, Ash, thank you so much for having
- 0:49Speaker 2: me and thank you for the opportunity of chatting with you. So.
- 0:52Speaker 1: Ocular Therapeutics has an injectible pipeline focused on tackling the
- 0:57Speaker 1: leading causes of blindness, including age related macular degeneration and
- 1:02Speaker 1: diabetic rhinoopathy. This is obviously a huge space. Almost everyone
- 1:07Speaker 1: faces eye issues as the age and of course we're
- 1:10Speaker 1: seeing rising rates of myopia globally. Braven, can you maybe
- 1:15Speaker 1: start us out on the therapeutic level, walk us through
- 1:17Speaker 1: macular degeneration as a disease and the market over the
- 1:20Speaker 1: last forty years.
- 1:21Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you again for the question. So, wet macular
- 1:26Speaker 2: degeneration then that's when blood vessels grow and bleed is
- 1:29Speaker 2: the leading cause of blindness in this country for folks
- 1:33Speaker 2: that are over over fifty sixty years old. As recently
- 1:38Speaker 2: as when I was in training, and certainly when I
- 1:40Speaker 2: was in practice, maybe about thirty five years ago or so,
- 1:44Speaker 2: we had no treatment whatsoever. Then came a drug call Locentus,
- 1:49Speaker 2: and it was almost miraculous that we could actually inject
- 1:51Speaker 2: a drug in the eye on a regular basis and
- 1:54Speaker 2: be able to treat this disease. But fast forward to now.
- 2:00Speaker 2: The tragedy of this is really that despite having a
- 2:03Speaker 2: drug that works extraordinarily well, and now we have a
- 2:07Speaker 2: Loucentus and Aleiah and the second version of each of
- 2:11Speaker 2: the two, the tragedy here is that in this country,
- 2:14Speaker 2: in the US, in the first year, forty percent of
- 2:17Speaker 2: patients drop out. And think about that, almost half the
- 2:20Speaker 2: patients drop out of treatment, and all of those patients
- 2:23Speaker 2: end up going blind. And that's just a human tragedy,
- 2:26Speaker 2: and that's that's a huge economic load to bear as well.
- 2:30Speaker 2: And the second part of this also is that even
- 2:33Speaker 2: in those patients who are able to come in on
- 2:35Speaker 2: a regular basis and get treated, those patients. Of those patients,
- 2:42Speaker 2: approximately seventy five eighty percent of them after about two
- 2:46Speaker 2: to five years end up getting worse than baseline. So
- 2:51Speaker 2: there are things that we need to do and there
- 2:53Speaker 2: are things that we need to address. This really is
- 2:56Speaker 2: what I think is a huge problem. And those are
- 2:59Speaker 2: the two goals that we have f X Pasley, which
- 3:01Speaker 2: is to improve the sustainability of treatment as well as
- 3:04Speaker 2: improve the long term outcomes.
- 3:07Speaker 1: That's fantastic, And so you've really walked us through how
- 3:10Speaker 1: you differentiate yourself structurally, you know, specifically, let's dig into
- 3:14Speaker 1: the technology. How do you improve on these competitors that
- 3:17Speaker 1: you've spoken of, Lucentus and Alia.
- 3:20Speaker 2: Well, we're not reinventing the wheel. We're actually making it
- 3:23Speaker 2: a lot more efficient and better, I think. So we
- 3:27Speaker 2: have a target that we know works called VEGF this
- 3:32Speaker 2: is what lucentis, and ALEYAH and vibismo and high dose
- 3:36Speaker 2: Alaya block, so we know that it's a de risked
- 3:38Speaker 2: known target. What we also have is a drug called
- 3:43Speaker 2: that is a tki at tirescene kines inhibit or call
- 3:46Speaker 2: excidonyb that targets the same receptor, So again a d
- 3:50Speaker 2: risk target. But as I talked about sustainability, we also
- 3:56Speaker 2: have a matrix, a tunable hydrogel matrix where we can
- 4:00Speaker 2: with that TKI. So together, what we think we have
- 4:03Speaker 2: is a de risk drug placed in a matrix of
- 4:07Speaker 2: sustained and predictable and tunable release.
- 4:11Speaker 1: Amazing. See you've clearly laid out how you can change
- 4:14Speaker 1: the AMD market. How about diabetic rhymeopathy? What do you
- 4:18Speaker 1: think you can really? What will your impact be there?
- 4:22Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, we're very excited about both diseases,
- 4:25Speaker 2: of course, but diabetic retinopathy may be an even bigger
- 4:29Speaker 2: unmet need. And let me describe that. So the population,
- 4:33Speaker 2: of course is different. As I mentioned earlier on aged
- 4:35Speaker 2: related marketer, generation usually occurs in people that are over
- 4:38Speaker 2: fifty to fifty five. Thus, age related and diabetic retinopathy
- 4:43Speaker 2: occurs in younger patients that are in the workforce, and frankly,
- 4:48Speaker 2: they have no symptoms to begin with. So the patients
- 4:52Speaker 2: that we're targeting with moderate to severe what we call
- 4:56Speaker 2: non proliferative diabetic retinopathy, they may have a visual acutive twenty,
- 5:00Speaker 2: but they've got a ticking time bomb. And what I
- 5:03Speaker 2: mean by that is that they have a chance about
- 5:06Speaker 2: a thirty to forty percent chance a year upon year
- 5:10Speaker 2: of getting a blinding or vision threatening complication. That's a
- 5:15Speaker 2: massive number, and that's year upon year, and these are
- 5:19Speaker 2: young people that are in the workforce. They could be lawyers, doctors,
- 5:22Speaker 2: truck drivers, reporters. And we also have a known target
- 5:28Speaker 2: that works, and that's the same receptor ve Jeff. If
- 5:32Speaker 2: you've ever injected a loocentus or eyel in such a patient,
- 5:37Speaker 2: what you see within a matter of days is nearly miraculous,
- 5:40Speaker 2: which is the blood vessels look better, the blood goes away,
- 5:44Speaker 2: it looks like a brand new eye. But the problem
- 5:48Speaker 2: is that in order to sustain that, these patients will
- 5:51Speaker 2: have to come in every month or every other month,
- 5:53Speaker 2: and if they don't, if then this visits, there's a
- 5:56Speaker 2: possibility of a rebound effect of it getting even worse.
- 6:00Speaker 2: These patients are never treated, I mean literally never treated.
- 6:02Speaker 2: There's less than one percent of patients being treated despite
- 6:06Speaker 2: this huge risk and despite having a known treatment. So
- 6:10Speaker 2: what we propose is to go ahead and put in
- 6:13Speaker 2: x pasley and then allow for this sustained suppression of veggif.
- 6:19Speaker 2: Now we do have a study called Helios where we've
- 6:21Speaker 2: done that, and the results that we've seen is absolutely spectacular.
- 6:25Speaker 2: In our opinion, and by the way, we're all clinicians,
- 6:28Speaker 2: myself included, so for us it really hits home. What
- 6:32Speaker 2: we saw was that every single patient that had a
- 6:36Speaker 2: single injection of ex Pactsley with diabetic retinopathy improved. Every
- 6:41Speaker 2: single patient patients who did not had a complication rate
- 6:48Speaker 2: in terms of having a blinding or a vision threatening
- 6:51Speaker 2: complication of thirty to forty percent, well in line with
- 6:54Speaker 2: what we expect, but with a single injection of ex
- 6:57Speaker 2: Pasley after one year, that risk was reduced literally to zero,
- 7:02Speaker 2: which is incredible, literally to zero. So that means that
- 7:06Speaker 2: if this is borne out in larger trials and if
- 7:09Speaker 2: this goes to market, one can sit with a patient
- 7:12Speaker 2: and say, miss Jones, you have a risk of thirty
- 7:15Speaker 2: to forty percent year upon year of a blinding complication,
- 7:18Speaker 2: and if you come to see me but once a year,
- 7:22Speaker 2: like you go to a dentist for teeth cleaning, I
- 7:24Speaker 2: can reduce that risk literally to zero once a year.
- 7:28Speaker 2: And that's sustainable, that's doable, and there are number of
- 7:31Speaker 2: patients that will be impacted by that is absolutely enormous.
- 7:35Speaker 1: Amazing, and so we've kind of skirted around it, but
- 7:39Speaker 1: maybe that that brings us to kind of the more
- 7:41Speaker 1: commercial side of things from the payer perspective, Why does
- 7:44Speaker 1: this strug make sense? And walk us through why you
- 7:47Speaker 1: don't think it will require step at.
- 7:48Speaker 2: Its Yeah, So let's go with wet maket generation first
- 7:52Speaker 2: and then talk about diabetic retinopathy. And I think both
- 7:54Speaker 2: are really related. So if you think about what I
- 7:58Speaker 2: just said earlier on that forty percent of patients in
- 8:02Speaker 2: this country alone in the first year dropout, every one
- 8:07Speaker 2: of those patients end up going blind. And if you've
- 8:12Speaker 2: looked at pair boards, and I've been on a couple
- 8:15Speaker 2: of pair boards, pairs are like actuarians. They classify diseases
- 8:20Speaker 2: and what the cost of that disease is. And by
- 8:23Speaker 2: far the most expensive disease in the world is blindness.
- 8:26Speaker 2: It's not cancer, you know, it's not strokes, it's not
- 8:30Speaker 2: heart attacks, it's blindness. And the reason for that is
- 8:32Speaker 2: really quite simple. The reason for that is because the
- 8:35Speaker 2: mortality doesn't change. The use of resources skyrockets, but the
- 8:40Speaker 2: mortality doesn't change. In fact, in this country, every blind
- 8:44Speaker 2: patient patient costs over sixty six thousand dollars a year.
- 8:49Speaker 2: It's an enormous cost. Now, if we reduce that drop
- 8:53Speaker 2: out rate by even ten percent with x Paxley, which
- 8:56Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll do and I'm sure will do even better.
- 8:59Speaker 2: Now we're talking about a quarter million fewer patients in
- 9:02Speaker 2: this country alone who will not go blind. The impact
- 9:07Speaker 2: off that not just on a human basis, but on
- 9:10Speaker 2: an economic basis, it's astronomical. So the payers love this
- 9:15Speaker 2: because what we're doing provides not only an incredible resource
- 9:22Speaker 2: and advantage to humanity, but also is a cost savings
- 9:25Speaker 2: measure or a huge cost savings measure. So there's great
- 9:28Speaker 2: deal of support from payers. We have a lot of
- 9:30Speaker 2: payer boards and this is something that the payers we
- 9:35Speaker 2: feel will really support. From the diabetic retinopathy side, the
- 9:40Speaker 2: story is really very much similar. The cost for a
- 9:43Speaker 2: patient once they lose vision, whether it be by diabetic
- 9:46Speaker 2: manket or edema or attraction retinal detachment or vitrius hembrhage
- 9:50Speaker 2: is enormous. And if you can go ahead and identify
- 9:54Speaker 2: patients and treat them but once a year, as we said,
- 9:57Speaker 2: and reduce that risk literally to who's zero. Again, it's
- 10:01Speaker 2: not just a societal impact, but the economic impact of
- 10:04Speaker 2: that is tremendous. So we believe that we'll garner an
- 10:09Speaker 2: enormous amount of support, not just economically but also from
- 10:13Speaker 2: a societal impact point of view.
- 10:15Speaker 1: That's very interesting and kind of continuing with commerciality and
- 10:20Speaker 1: of course approval is the most important thing. Tell us
- 10:23Speaker 1: about your interactions with the FDA, and maybe can we
- 10:27Speaker 1: dig in a little bit on how you think the
- 10:28Speaker 1: FDA is changing and adapting to a new world, a
- 10:32Speaker 1: new world with AI.
- 10:34Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's quite interesting what the FDA has
- 10:36Speaker 2: said from quite a long time ago is that if
- 10:41Speaker 2: you meet certain criteria, that you will have the opportunity
- 10:46Speaker 2: to get your drug to patients as quickly as possible.
- 10:49Speaker 2: And by quickly as possible means one study, but it's
- 10:53Speaker 2: not for everybody. You've got to meet certain evidentiary standards,
- 10:57Speaker 2: and those evidentiary standards start from have a well controlled,
- 11:01Speaker 2: well designed study that is properly masked. Now we have
- 11:05Speaker 2: that because we've been validated and awarded a special protocol agreement,
- 11:11Speaker 2: which is rare to get, but we've gotten that with
- 11:13Speaker 2: our Soul one study, which is a Phase three study
- 11:17Speaker 2: that has been completed. The results have been outstanding. The
- 11:22Speaker 2: post study evidentiary standard is very clear. You have to
- 11:26Speaker 2: have a p value of less than zero point zero
- 11:29Speaker 2: zero one, and you have to have enough patients to
- 11:32Speaker 2: satisfy the FDA's three hundred patient safety requirement. We do both.
- 11:36Speaker 2: Our p value is less than zero point zero zero
- 11:39Speaker 2: zero six, which really is quite spectacular, and we certainly
- 11:44Speaker 2: can provide the FDA with more than three hundred patients
- 11:47Speaker 2: from a safety standpoint. So we believe that we checked
- 11:50Speaker 2: all the boxes. And we've always said that our goal
- 11:54Speaker 2: is to file with sol one alone because we believe
- 11:56Speaker 2: that this drug should be in the hands of physicians
- 11:59Speaker 2: and the eyes of patients as quickly as possible.
- 12:03Speaker 1: Amazing and maybe just your macro thoughts on the FDA
- 12:06Speaker 1: and how they're looking at things and changing.
- 12:09Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm a one trick pony, so all
- 12:12Speaker 2: I know is ophalmology, and specifically, all I know is RATNA,
- 12:15Speaker 2: and you know, the FDA from everything that I know,
- 12:18Speaker 2: is kind of like Europe. You know, it's not just
- 12:20Speaker 2: you know, one franchise as a whole bunch of them,
- 12:23Speaker 2: and all of them may behave differently, and all of
- 12:25Speaker 2: them are franchises within themselves. So again, I'm a one
- 12:28Speaker 2: trick pony, and all I know is ophthalmology and I've
- 12:30Speaker 2: worked with the Ophthalmology Division of the FDA four or
- 12:34Speaker 2: thirty years. Really nothing has changed. Doctor Wiley Chambers, who
- 12:38Speaker 2: was our director there has retired. Doctor William Boyd, who
- 12:44Speaker 2: has been with him for over I think two decades
- 12:46Speaker 2: two and a half decades, is now the director. Nobody
- 12:49Speaker 2: else really has changed. The consistency is remarkable, the collaboration
- 12:54Speaker 2: is remarkable. The support would get them from them is remarkable.
- 12:57Speaker 2: So as far as we're concerned, we have a fantastic
- 13:00Speaker 2: relationship with our FDA and their consistency and their support
- 13:04Speaker 2: is something I'm extremely grateful for.
- 13:06Speaker 1: That's wonderful to hear. And given the geopolitical situation in
- 13:11Speaker 1: the world. Tell us about your manufacturing and your supply chain.
- 13:14Speaker 1: Does this require cold shipping? Where where do these drugs
- 13:18Speaker 1: flow through?
- 13:19Speaker 2: Well, the great thing there is that it's all done
- 13:21Speaker 2: in the US. In fact, it's all done in Bedford, Massachusetts.
- 13:24Speaker 2: We have we have no issues with any import taxes
- 13:29Speaker 2: or anything like that. What we're doing is we're scaling
- 13:34Speaker 2: up for manufacturing both for wet macular generation as well
- 13:37Speaker 2: as diabetic retinopathy. We're doing so by acquiring more hardware,
- 13:41Speaker 2: if you will, buildings and so forth. There's a lot
- 13:44Speaker 2: of automation that we put in play right now, and
- 13:48Speaker 2: we believe that we'll be able to very confident that
- 13:51Speaker 2: we'll be able to manufacture in Bedford, Massachusetts with the
- 13:57Speaker 2: equality and the amount of of units that we will
- 14:01Speaker 2: need to satisfy patients commercially, both for wet maket or
- 14:04Speaker 2: generation as well as for diabetic retinopathy.
- 14:06Speaker 1: And should you hopefully receive approval, how quickly do you
- 14:09Speaker 1: think you can you can scale up manufacturing.
- 14:12Speaker 2: Oh, that's being done right now. So at the time
- 14:14Speaker 2: of approval, we'll be able to go right ahead and
- 14:18Speaker 2: I hit the ground running. You know. The thing about
- 14:20Speaker 2: this also is that this is important to say. We
- 14:24Speaker 2: believe that once approved, this drug will be used immediately,
- 14:27Speaker 2: and the reason for that is because there is no
- 14:31Speaker 2: change to anything the physician has to do. There's no
- 14:34Speaker 2: change to the workflow, there's not a single piece of
- 14:37Speaker 2: new equipment to buy, there's no added overhead, there's no
- 14:42Speaker 2: learning curve whatsoever. The experience is exactly the same. It's
- 14:46Speaker 2: simply a better drug which will make the physician happier
- 14:49Speaker 2: and most importantly, the patient happier.
- 14:51Speaker 1: Fantastic, I think you're selling yourself short, calling yourself a
- 14:55Speaker 1: one trick pony, but you have kept your pipeline tight.
- 14:59Speaker 1: Tell us about your your focus on that and how
- 15:01Speaker 1: that impacts your finances and partnerships and anything else on
- 15:05Speaker 1: the corporate structure side.
- 15:07Speaker 2: Well, we actually are one trick ponting. Yes, it's actually
- 15:10Speaker 2: quite accurate because we decided to be a one trick pony.
- 15:13Speaker 2: Also because we really don't know, we don't.
- 15:15Speaker 1: We also don't know anything else other.
- 15:16Speaker 2: Than the Retina. We keep on saying that we're a
- 15:19Speaker 2: company for Retina, Buy Retina, you know. And this may
- 15:23Speaker 2: sound arrogant, but I dare say that we have more
- 15:25Speaker 2: Retina experience in our little company per capita than any
- 15:28Speaker 2: other company and the planet. And it's really geared towards
- 15:32Speaker 2: Retina and entirely Retina. It's all we know. When I
- 15:35Speaker 2: came into this company, I hired who I thought were
- 15:37Speaker 2: the best of the best of the best people anywhere
- 15:39Speaker 2: in the planet for Retna. I also trim the pipeline
- 15:43Speaker 2: for the company to have an identity in a company
- 15:46Speaker 2: of this size, If you know, I've always felt that
- 15:48Speaker 2: if somebody says in a small company like this that
- 15:51Speaker 2: we have many many shots on goal, it means that
- 15:53Speaker 2: there's no shot on goal. I'd rather have one shot
- 15:56Speaker 2: on goal and then and the goal will be wide open.
- 15:58Speaker 2: And we feel that we have a fantastic chance of
- 16:01Speaker 2: a single trial approval. We've got terrific results. We know
- 16:05Speaker 2: Retina inside out and would like to remain a one
- 16:07Speaker 2: trick pony because that's what we do really really well.
- 16:10Speaker 2: Is Retina wonderful?
- 16:13Speaker 1: You know, there's certainly been I can think of some
- 16:16Speaker 1: Chrisper based gene editors that we're working on retinal degeneration
- 16:19Speaker 1: programs that ultimately stumbled. Maybe could we analyze two different
- 16:24Speaker 1: facets here, you know, how will your technology succeed where
- 16:28Speaker 1: these others have failed? And also do you think this
- 16:30Speaker 1: is a market that could be protected by or from
- 16:34Speaker 1: rather gene editing competition.
- 16:36Speaker 2: So look, I think gene therapy is phenomenal and as
- 16:42Speaker 2: in a broad scale, but I think it's really important
- 16:44Speaker 2: to understand what gene therapy is, at least in our field.
- 16:49Speaker 2: There are two very very important silos that are in
- 16:52Speaker 2: my mind, completely different. You know what you're talking about
- 16:55Speaker 2: with gene editing and so forth, is gene therapy for
- 16:58Speaker 2: inherit to rental disease is This is where a gene
- 17:02Speaker 2: may be replaced, for instance, or deliberately mutated, etc. This
- 17:08Speaker 2: is for inheriti rental diseases. These are usually rare diseases
- 17:11Speaker 2: and for that gene therapy is phenomenal. The other part
- 17:16Speaker 2: of the silo is gene therapy for chronic diseases, and
- 17:18Speaker 2: this is completely different. This is where certain cells called
- 17:22Speaker 2: the retinal pigment epithelial cells are infected and they are
- 17:26Speaker 2: asked to work as a factory and just pump out
- 17:29Speaker 2: protein and keep pumping out protein endlessly. That's a whole
- 17:34Speaker 2: different set of criteria there. So it's really important to
- 17:37Speaker 2: distinguish the two. I think that for inherit to rental diseases,
- 17:41Speaker 2: gene therapy is fantastic. I think there's some major challenges
- 17:44Speaker 2: still to be overcome for chronic retal diseases, makes sense.
- 17:49Speaker 1: I'm looking down the pipeline. Where do you see the
- 17:53Speaker 1: company in ten years and what keeps you up at
- 17:56Speaker 1: night on how you get there?
- 17:58Speaker 2: So what we're building is a standalone company, and I
- 18:01Speaker 2: want to say that very very clearly. What I didn't
- 18:04Speaker 2: have previously in my previous company was was that I
- 18:07Speaker 2: didn't have a known market because we're developing a product
- 18:12Speaker 2: for something called geographic atrophy and there was no drug
- 18:15Speaker 2: in the market at that time. Here we have a
- 18:18Speaker 2: known market that we think is actually underestimated, and the
- 18:22Speaker 2: market has been around for almost four decades, so it's
- 18:25Speaker 2: a known market. The second thing that I have here
- 18:28Speaker 2: is a commercial team. I didn't have that previously, at
- 18:31Speaker 2: least a full commercial team, and here there's a proven
- 18:34Speaker 2: commercial team that is selling a product already, something called
- 18:37Speaker 2: dextenza with the same hydrogel for the front of the eye.
- 18:42Speaker 2: We've expanded on those things we've built. We do our
- 18:45Speaker 2: own manufacturing, as I said earlier on, we've expanded on
- 18:49Speaker 2: that so everything really is a closed loop where we
- 18:52Speaker 2: have complete control over the entire company, which is really
- 18:56Speaker 2: nice to have. There's not a whole bunch of outsourcing,
- 18:59Speaker 2: so we've really built a standalone company that's capable of
- 19:03Speaker 2: marketing this product in the US and outside the US.
- 19:07Speaker 2: We've recently hired David Robinson, who was the architect of
- 19:11Speaker 2: the of the most successful launch that we've had in
- 19:15Speaker 2: Retina with Aleah. He was the architect of that. So
- 19:19Speaker 2: we're ready to go. As I tell people we're also
- 19:22Speaker 2: a public company. Like all other public companies were on
- 19:25Speaker 2: sale every single day as you know. However, our intention
- 19:29Speaker 2: is to build a standalone company, but continue to talk
- 19:33Speaker 2: with whoever wants to talk to us, and that's what
- 19:35Speaker 2: we're doing.
- 19:36Speaker 1: And you mentioned x US, you know, commercial opportunities. How
- 19:40Speaker 1: how do you differentiate your your launch targets x US, Well.
- 19:45Speaker 2: We're we are a fairly small company, as you know,
- 19:48Speaker 2: and you know our our attention has to be limited
- 19:52Speaker 2: at this point primarily to the US, but not only
- 19:55Speaker 2: to the US. We're also in conversations with OUs regulators
- 20:02Speaker 2: and we've had fantastic conversations with them in many ways.
- 20:06Speaker 2: What really attracts them is the fact that the use
- 20:09Speaker 2: of their resources will with physicians and so on and
- 20:12Speaker 2: so forth will go down tremendously with this product, and
- 20:17Speaker 2: the spread of treatment that can and that can be
- 20:21Speaker 2: garnered with a much wider net will will increase greatly.
- 20:25Speaker 2: If you can, if you can think about a forty
- 20:28Speaker 2: percent dropout rate in the first sure in the US,
- 20:31Speaker 2: that is many times higher in many countries outside the US.
- 20:35Speaker 2: So the human impact, the economic impact of this potentially
- 20:38Speaker 2: will be even greater outside the US.
- 20:41Speaker 1: That's wonderful. And what else do you think it's it's
- 20:43Speaker 1: important to leave our listeners with today.
- 20:46Speaker 2: Well, I think what's really important is exactly what I said,
- 20:50Speaker 2: and we laughed about it a little bit to saying
- 20:51Speaker 2: we're a one trick pony, but we're very, very focused
- 20:54Speaker 2: on retina. We may not know anything else, but we
- 20:57Speaker 2: know retina inside out. We have a de risk product
- 21:01Speaker 2: because we have a receptor that is known to work.
- 21:07Speaker 2: We have filled in. We believe what are the biggest needs,
- 21:10Speaker 2: which is the sustainability issue. The other part that we
- 21:13Speaker 2: haven't talked about, and maybe this is what I'll touch on,
- 21:15Speaker 2: is the second part of our goal. We talked about
- 21:17Speaker 2: the sustainability part. The second part of the goal is
- 21:20Speaker 2: improved long term outcomes. And what I said earlier on
- 21:23Speaker 2: was that even in patients who are able to come
- 21:27Speaker 2: in for an injection every month or every other month,
- 21:30Speaker 2: and you know, those patients after two to five years
- 21:34Speaker 2: ultimately end up getting worse than baseline. And the reason
- 21:38Speaker 2: they get worse than baseline is because of the pulsatile
- 21:41Speaker 2: nature in which we inject. In other words, we give
- 21:43Speaker 2: a whole bunch of drug and then the drug fades away.
- 21:45Speaker 2: We give a whole bunch of drug, and the drug
- 21:47Speaker 2: fades away, whether it be every month or every other month.
- 21:50Speaker 2: And because the back of the eye, the retina is
- 21:53Speaker 2: nerve tissue, it goes, it get thickens and thins and
- 21:57Speaker 2: thickens and thins, and it's akin to having multiple cushions.
- 22:01Speaker 2: So what ends up happening is that the retina gets scarred,
- 22:05Speaker 2: much like the brain would get scarred. And that's how
- 22:08Speaker 2: patients gradually lose vision and gradually but inevitably lose vision,
- 22:14Speaker 2: even those that can come in. And what we believe
- 22:17Speaker 2: this drug will do, and there's ample evidence to show
- 22:20Speaker 2: that it should be doing this, is by not having
- 22:22Speaker 2: those pulsatile inhibitions, by having a constant inhibition that lasts
- 22:28Speaker 2: for a long time, we will reduce this thickening and
- 22:31Speaker 2: thinning and thickening and thinning, and we will reduce the
- 22:35Speaker 2: risk of having scarring fibrosis. And ultimately, not only will
- 22:40Speaker 2: this drug allow for better sustainability, but this drug will
- 22:43Speaker 2: allow for a better long term outcome as well.
- 22:46Speaker 1: It's fantastic. Well, it was a pleasure speaking with you today.
- 22:50Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time and sharing ocular
- 22:53Speaker 1: therapeutic story. I'm in Hunter van Kirk, and you've been
- 22:56Speaker 1: listening to the Vanguards of Healthcare podcasts by Bloomberg Intelligence.
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- 23:02Speaker 1: with the leaders in healthcare innovation.