Private biotech Eyevensys said today that it treated the 1st patient in a first-in-human phase I/II trial of its lead candidate, EYS606, for the treatment of non-infectious uveitis. The patient was treated in Paris at the Cochin Institute using the company’s EyeCET technology.
The EyeCET platform is an electro-transfection injection system that delivers non-viral plasmids to encode for disease-specific therapeutic proteins in the ciliary muscle of the eye. Eyevensys’ lead product delivers a plasmid that encodes for the production of a protein to treat non-infectious uveitis.
The 24-patient trial aims to evaluate the safety and tolerability of the treatment. The procedure takes less than 5 minutes, according to Eyevensys, and is designed to eliminate the need for monthly injections.
Eyevensys said it expects initial results from the dose escalation study in the 1st half of 2018.
“Successfully treating our 1st patient is an important step towards improving outcomes for patients with NIU,” founder & chief scientific officer Francine Behar-Cohen said in prepared remarks. “This is the first time plasmid DNA has been successfully delivered to the eye via electro-transfection. This represents a major milestone for Eyevensys and a key step in validating the potential of our EyeCET platform to provide safe and long-lasting treatments for patients while avoiding the current standard of multiple injections and their associated safety risks.”
“I am delighted to be part of this landmark clinical study using Eyevensys’ unique EyeCET platform,” principal investigator Antoine Brézin added. “This 1st treatment was very well tolerated by the patient, which represents an important step towards potentially improving outcomes for patients with NIU. NIU is a rare and severe eye condition afflicting approx. 25,000 in France and there is a critical need for novel treatments.”
