EyeBio Announces First Asset in Pipeline of Retinal Disease Treatments and Appoints New Members to Executive Team
Eyebiotech Limited announced several appointments to its executive team and announced details on Restoret, the first asset in a pipeline of multi-specific agonist antibodies.
EyeBio announced the following appointments to the senior leadership team:
Anthony P. Adamis, MD, has been appointed chief scientific officer. Dr. Adamis, who co-founded EyeBio in 2021 and Eyetech in 2002 with Dr. Guyer, previously served as senior vice president of Product Development and Development Innovation at Genentech, a member of The Roche Group. Over the course of his career, he has led development programs in multiple therapeutic areas and has overseen 25 FDA approvals, the most recent of which was faricimab, a novel anti-VEGF anti-Ang-2 bi-specific antibody for treating wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME).
“EyeBio is building one of the strongest ophthalmology pipelines in biopharma: Two novel and innovative agonist antibody assets, both with first-in-class and best-in-class potential,” Dr. Adamis said in a company news release. “I am delighted to join a company that can combine such scientific potential with a global team of highly experienced ophthalmic drug developers.”
EyeBio also announced senior leadership appointments:
- Loni Da Silva, chief regulatory officer
- Frances Betts, global head, clinical operations
- Mike Davies, chemistry, manufacturing, and control (CMC) lead, drug development
- Eric Ng, PhD, senior vice president, biology
“We founded EyeBio to capture scientific advances and translate them into effective treatments for patients with serious eye diseases,” David Guyer, MD, co-founder, CEO, and president of EyeBio, said in a company news release. “The world-class team we have assembled gives us the talent and resources to continue our rapid progress and success in advancing a strong pipeline. It is a privilege to be surrounded by an elite group of leaders in ophthalmology, many of whom have been working in this space since the dawn of pharmacotherapy for eye disease.”
Restoret and the importance of the Wnt pathway
EyeBio produce candidate Restoret is a tri-specific Wnt agonist antibody designed to address unmet medical need in patients with back-of-the-eye diseases. According to EyeBio, the result of a breakthrough in molecular design, Restoret will enable the clinical translation of the extensively studied Wnt pathway for the first time in the eye. Since the discovery that Wnt genes code for proteins that drive normal development and maintenance of the blood-retinal barrier, the Wnt pathway has been a focus of many top research institutes. Published research has shown that Wnt signaling in the retina plays a central role in the maintenance of vascular integrity, and defects in Wnt signaling cause retinal vascular leakage. A mimetic of norrin, which is the natural Wnt ligand in the eye, Restoret has demonstrated efficacy in preclinical ophthalmic models, including validation in genetic models.
The EyeBio team plans to file for clinical trial authorizations to enable a global phase 1b/2 clinical trial of Restoret in the second quarter of 2023.
EyeBio also announced it has in-licensed a second bispecific agonist antibody asset for the treatment of retinal diseases, with a separate and complementary mechanism of action to Restoret.