Oculis Raises CHF20M To Advance Topical DME Therapy And Turn Swiss
Executive Summary
Icelandic clinical stage biotech Oculis closes CHF20M ($20.3m) series B financing to advance development of its Phase IIb topical DME drug candidate, relocate to Switzerland and beef up its management team.
Armed with a proprietary technology that enables compounds to be reformulated as eye drops and made more bioavailable to all parts of the eye, Oculis, until recently a Reykjavik, Iceland-based company, has raised CHF20m ($20.3m) in a series B venture round. The funds will be used to continue the clinical development of its lead program OC-118 as well as finance the relocation of its headquarters to Lausanne in Switzerland and recruitment of a new management team.
The financing was led by a syndicate including Bay City Capital, Novartis Venture Fund and Pivotal bioVenture Partners. Existing investors including Brunnur Ventures and Silfurberg, also participated in the financing. Oculis, which was founded in 2003 but did not recruit its first employee until 2011, raised $5m in a series A round in 2016.
The lead program, OC-118, is a topical eye-drop treatment containing a proven ophthalmic drug dexamethasone (1.5%) successfully reformulated with Oculis’ solubilizing nanoparticle (SNP) technology to safely enhance its bioavailability to all parts of the eye. The SNP technology was discovered and developed by Oculis founders Thorsteinn Loftsson, professor of physical pharmacy, and Einar Stefansson, professor of ophthalmology, both from the University of Iceland. Oculis owns all the patents associated with the SNP technology.
OC-118 is currently in a Phase IIb clinical trial for the treatment of a back of the eye disease called diabetic macular edema (DME). To date, two pilot studies, involving 41 patients, have been performed in Japan and showed that OC-118 was well tolerated with no significant safety issues.
According to Riad Sherif, the company’s new CEO and formerly area president Europe, Middle East & Africa at Alcon Laboratories Inc. and former senior executive at Novartis AG, the new funds will be used to complete the current Phase IIb trial and take it to the next stage, develop OC-118 for front of the eye indications and further develop other drug candidates using the SNP technology to clinical stage.
“OC-118 might be useful in other back of the eye indications such as uveitis and front of the eye indications like post-op cataract. We are developing a pipeline of preclinical candidates in different indications such as glaucoma and dry eye,” added Sherif.
Oculis will also now look for a partner to develop either OC-118 or the SNP technology. “We believe that our technology can be leveraged with other known molecules or new molecular entities,” Sherif said.
Joining Sherif will be Páll Ragnar Jóhannesson, as chief financial officer and managing director of Oculis in Iceland, and Sabri Markabi, previously senior VP, head of R&D and chief medical officer at Alcon, as chief scientific officer. The company’s founders, Einar Stefánsson and Thorsteinn Loftsson, will join as chief innovation officer and chief research and technology officer, respectively. Florent Gros from Novartis Venture Fund is joining the company’s board as chairman, alongside Arni Blöndal from Brunnur Ventures, Stefan J. Sveinsson, formerly global EVP RD at Actavis, Lionel Carnot from Bay City Capital, and Rob Hopfner of Pivotal bioVenture Partners.