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news.Ocata Therapeutics has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to fund Investigational New Drug (IND).
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It enables preclinical development of Ocata’s proprietary photoreceptor progenitor product for the treatment of retinal degenerative diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and photoreceptor dystrophies.
Ocata chief scientific officer and principal investigator of the grant Robert Lanza said: "Ocata has developed a unique and novel method for robust differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into pure, renewable populations of retinal photoreceptor cells.
"Our studies in multiple animal models have shown that these cells can integrate into damaged retina, promote survival of host photoreceptors, and restore vision in completely blind animals, using either embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells as source material."
Retinal degenerative diseases are characterized by loss of photoreceptor cells resulting in permanent loss of vision and often blindness. Currently there is no curative therapy.
These conditions exert extensive societal burdens on quality-of-life, productivity, and health-care costs, and thus an urgent need exists to develop strategies for retinal survival, repair, and replacement to combat RP and other degenerative diseases of the retina. The photoreceptor cell product developed by Ocata has been shown to have neuro-protective and restorative activity, in animal models, for both early and end stage retinal degenerative diseases.
Paul Wotton, President and CEO, said: "This second grant from the NIH, within weeks of our recently announced grant for the development of our HMC™ product to treat lupus, underscores our leadership in cell based therapy and recognizes the promise of our photoreceptor product as a potential new treatment for retinal degenerative diseases.
"The depth and breadth of our pipeline provides a solid foundation to build a world class company based on innovative regenerative medicine technologies. Our goal is to aggressively develop our pipeline with the intent to file IND applications with the FDA as expeditiously as possible."