News & Events

Ocugen has signed a manufacturing deal with Kemwell Biopharma for a potential treatment of retinal diseases.

Ophthalmologist Mohamed Genead, MD, chair of Ocugen’s retina scientific advisory board, is excited about a revolutionary new approach—the modifier gene platform—that takes a “gene-independent approach” by overexpressing upstream regulatory genes for nuclear hormone receptors (NHRs) in retinal cells instead of attempting to correct mutations in individual genes.

Turning to gene therapy after its dry eye drug didn’t work out, Ocugen hopes to overcome financial challenges to bring a gene therapy into the clinic for numerous mutations of RP.

A Chester County gene therapy company specializing in eye diseases has received its fourth "orphan drug" designation for a single new drug candidate from the Food and Drug Administration.

An overwhelming majority of rare diseases are the result of a single-gene defect, making them a potential target in the hunt for treatment.

CEORoadshow interviewed Shankar Musunuri, PhD, MBA, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Ocugen, Inc., in April 2020. 

Disrupting the current norms of the drug development process has always been the cornerstone of biopharmaceutical innovation.

We spoke to Shankar Musunuri, CEO of Ocugen, about the company’s modifier gene therapy platform, how a single gene therapy can work on multiple eye diseases, and how it may alter the economics for gene therapy for rare eye conditions.

Clinical-stage company Ocugen Inc. shared last month that preclinical data regarding the nuclear hormone receptor gene NR2E3 as a genetic modifier and therapeutic agent to treat retinal degenerative diseases had been published in Nature Gene Therapy.

Retinitis pigmentosa is a group of blinding eye diseases caused by more than 150 different gene mutations, making effective therapies difficult to develop. A new treatment created by scientists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear aims to provide broad-spectrum therapy, regardless of genetic cause, with promising early results in animals.

Ocugen developing therapies for rare and underserved eye diseases

Ocugen has developed a new platform that could help bring greater attention to underserved areas of ophthalmology.

Xtalks spoke with Ocugen's Shankar Musunuri to learn more about a novel drug delivery system and drug candidate pairing for the treatment of ocular Graft versus Host Disease (GVHD).

Ocugen Inc (NASDAQ: OCGN) CEO Shankar Musunuri spoke with Steve Darling from Proactive at the LD Micro Conference in Bel Air, California. The Pennsylvania-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company is focused on developing therapies to treat rare and underserved eye diseases.

Ocugen offers a robust and diversified ophthalmology portfolio that includes novel gene therapies, biologics and small molecules targeting a range of high-need retinal and ocular surface diseases.

The FDA has given Ocugen orphan drug status for a gene therapy designed to treat NR2E3 mutation-associated retinal degenerative disease.

Dr. Shankar Musunuri, Ph.D., MBA, is Chairman of the Board, CEO and Co-founder of Ocugen, Inc., discusses the Company’s lead clinical candidate (OCU300) that is currently in Phase 3 for patients with ocular graft versus host disease (oGVHD) and is the first and only therapeutic with orphan drug designation for oGVHD, and the Company’s second lead candidate (OCU310) which is also in Phase 3 for patients with dry eye disease.

Ocugen said today that it launched a Phase III trial designed to evaluate its twice-daily 0.2% brimonidine tartrate eye drop in patients with dry eye disease.

To the layperson, dry eye disease (DED), technically xerophthalmia, often is dismissed as an innocuous nuisance that can be treated with over-the-counter eye drops.

Ocugen said today that it launched the first of two pivotal Phase III trials for its OCU300 nanoemulsion designed to treat the symptoms of ocular graft versus host disease.

Biotech hopes to counter established Restasis and Xiidra in dry eye with a combination of two approved
ophthalmology eye drops, offering quicker onset of action, tolerability and strong efficacy.

Eye disease specialist Ocugen remains on course to have two drugs in late-stage testing before the end of the year as its dry eye disease candidate OCU310 clears a phase 2 trial.

While Allergan PLC and Shire PLC are jockeying for supremacy in the dry eye disease space, with the former's Restasis (cyclosporine ophthalmic emulsion) losing market share to the latter's Xiidra (lifitegrast), a host of other companies have candidates in clinical development for dry eye addressing a wide variety of targets in the hopes of bettering the existing therapies or benefiting an underserved niche.

Shankar Musunuri has spent time in both the pharmaceutical world and the biotech arena – after 15 years at Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), he went on to launch several biotech start-ups. As co-founder, chairman & chief executive of Ocugen, he is looking to bring eye disease products to the patients that big pharma’s drugs have left out.

Ocugen, Inc., a rapidly growing ophthalmology company developing a rich clinical pipeline of innovative therapies and novel biologics that address rare and underserved ocular diseases, today announced its Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Shankar Musunuri, Ph.D., MBA, was named one of the “Most Admired CEO’s in 2017” by the Philadelphia Business Journal.