OptiKira Awarded Phase 2 SBIR Grant to Support Development of Retinitis Pigmentosa Treatment

OptiKira announced that it was awarded a phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to support continued development of a therapy that has the potential to preserve vision in patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The $1.6M grant will be used to advance one or more of OptiKira’s most promising compounds into investigational new drug-enabling studies.

“This grant will play an integral role in advancing our compound to our next phase of development,” Tim Pelura, PhD, CEO of OptiKira, said in a company news release. “We are hopeful that our novel approach to the treatment of retinitis pigmentosa will eventually lead to a breakthrough therapy for the more than 100,000 Americans living with this condition.”

OptiKira’s research team discovered that, by targeting the UPR and regulating its activity to favor an adaptive rather than destructive pathway, cell death and degeneration is prevented not only in RP, but in a variety of other diseases, including fibrotic diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, cancer, diabetes, and various neurodegenerative diseases. Proof of concept has been demonstrated in mouse models of RP, diabetes, fibrosis, and cancer; with ongoing proof of concept studies underway.

OptiKira was formed in 2015 by BioMotiv, the for-profit collaborator of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Washington. The company has received support from Arix Bioscience, the Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, which is supported in part by a grant from the Ohio Third Frontier, two National Institutes of Health Small Business Technology Transfer grants, and the ALS Association. OptiKira’s technologies are exclusively licensed from UCSF and the University of Washington.