Project description
Eye drops may disrupt the autoimmune response in serious eye diseases
Ocular inflammatory diseases, also called uveitis, are a diverse group of inflammatory diseases of autoimmune or infectious origin that can lead to blindness. Despite progress made using steroid therapy to reduce inflammation, there is no effective treatment, and long-term steroid use can cause serious complications. TRS has developed a patented bio-inspired molecule that disrupts the autoimmune mechanism causing the diseases. It thus has the potential to treat disease progression and not simply ameliorate the symptoms. The technology will be available as drops and as injections to treat all parts of the eye depending on the specific disease. EU funding is supporting clinical trials whose results will aid in securing financing for commercialisation.
Objective
Ocular inflammatory diseases – affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide – impose a significant medical and economic burden on society and can lead to blindness. Today, corticosteroids are the most common method used to treat ocular non-infectious inflammation of any kind. Rather than treating the disease itself, however, steroids merely relieve its symptoms, and long-term use can result in devastating consequences.
Our bio-inspired drug candidate is a non-steroid. It approaches inflammatory diseases from within the immune system and was developed to ‘re-engineer’ the immune system. Based on excellent preclinical results, we believe that this approach will have the capability to disrupt the immune mechanism that causes the disease in order to provide patients with a safe and long-lasting therapeutic effect, with the goal of saving them from blindness.
Our platform technology has the potential to effectively treat a broad array of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and to become a first in class, market approved molecule for local treatment of inflammatory ocular diseases.
Our first target indication is uveitic glaucoma – a devastating orphan disease requiring urgent treatment and carrying high risk of blindness. Selecting an orphan indication as a market penetration strategy will grant us extended market exclusivity, tax reliefs and shorter time to market.
In the project, we will perform a Phase I/IIa clinical trial. We will exploit the trial results to secure financing for further clinical development towards commercialization. The global ocular inflammation treatment market is expected to exceed more than US$ 500 Billion by 2024. As our first target indication has a significant unmet need with no approved treatment, we expect to gain 25% of market shares 5 years post launch, which would correspond to >€700 M in revenue for Tarsius in 2028 for uveitic glaucoma only. Profits will be reinvested to develop our product pipeline and expand our company.
Fields of science
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineophthalmologyglaucoma
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinflammatory diseases
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineimmunology
- social sciencessociologygovernancetaxation
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
3093765 Zichron Yaakov
Israel
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.