The Latest Frontier in Vision Correction
Mark Dlugoss:
Vision correction has evolved over the years from basic eyeglasses and contact lenses to development of PRK, LASIK, and SMILE, all procedures geared to treating myopia and astigmatism. The latest frontier vision correction is presbyopia correcting eye drops. While the FDA approved Allergan’s Vuity in October, 2021, there are at least six other companies developing some form of presbyopia correcting eye drop.
This non-invasive approach has the potential to offer great benefits to both ophthalmologists and patients. Hello, this is Mark Dlugoss, senior contributing editor for Ophthalmology 360, and welcome to the Ophthalmic Project powered by Ophthalmology 360. In today’s Ophthalmic Project, we sit down with the chief executive officer of one of the companies that is developing a presbyopia correcting drop. We hope to learn more about this drop and the emerging market it represents.
Joining the Ophthalmic Project now is Ben Bergo, CEO of Visus Therapeutics. Ben, welcome to the Ophthalmic Project.
Ben Bergo:
Mark, thank you for having me, and it’s a pleasure to be here. Look forward to the discussion. Thank you.
Mark Dlugoss:
Great. Well, let’s get really into it really quick. I’ll start with the company itself and Visus Therapeutics. Can you provide a history of Visus, and how the company approaches drug development differently than other companies?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. Yeah. The company was founded in October of 2019. At that point in time, we acquired two sets of assets, actually. We acquired the assets, the key patents that underpin our presbyopia correcting eye drop, and we also acquired a large patent estate for histatin peptides. That was back in October, 2019, and we raised some convertible note in capital, early seed financing. We then moved forward and went through a formulation development in 2020.
We were fortunate as a company, actually, to lean on a lot of clinical data that had already been developed in a number of studies that had been published. We started in an unusual position as an early stage company, but with clinical studies already conducted with this combination therapy that obviously we’re developing. We moved through 2020, again, did some formulation development, and then we commenced a phase two study last year in the first quarter. Then again, readout data in Q4 and commenced our two pivotal studies in the first quarter of this year.
We raised series A financing in the first quarter of 2021 with JJDC, Johnson Johnson, and RTW, and then closed another financing actually in the middle of the year with our EQT partners and some other smaller funds. Today we’ve raised approximately 57 million in equity capital, and we closed an exclusive licensing transaction for Greater China earlier this year. That transaction obviously will help us in move into some Asian territories.
That’s a short history on the company. Really, it’s from the beginning, it’s from these key patents that we acquired, which we’ve built on in presbyopia, but the inventor, Herb Kaufman, it’s been many, many years developing this formulation, this combination, and we think it has great promise for this category.
Mark Dlugoss:
Yeah. You’ve been pretty busy in your three years of existence there. Can you provide some background regarding your experience in pharmaceutical industry, your business experiencing basically, and how did all this ties in building Visus Therapeutics into a top notch of pharma company?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. I’ve spent time on the direct investment side. Earlier in my career, where I worked in venture capital in Australia for several years, close to five years. Had experience in investing into biotech companies. I came to the US actually with a company that I helped co-found also in cell therapy actually, with a phase 2B program, otherwise licensed from the Fred Hutch. Then came into eye care more recently, but have had well over a decade of experience both in raising capital and financing, and in structuring early stage companies in pharmaceutical, and also, again, in making investments into the companies in this arena.
That experience coupled with a lot of development experience we have in the company across the board, from clinical and our nonclinical development teams, we have a tremendous amount of experience in developing ophthalmic drugs and bringing those obviously through to market.
Mark Dlugoss:
With all your background, what attracted you to ophthalmology and eyecare in general?
Ben Bergo:
It’s a particular industry, similar in some ways to cardiovascular, actually, well, maybe in the stent market as a parallel, but if you look at that market, it has very, very rapid innovation cycles. There are very, very rapid innovations and a tight intermingling, if you like, between the physician community, and investors, and industry. I saw the same in eyecare. There’s very, very close ties to industry, and also to the physician community.
You’re able to move product development along, drug development along, at a pretty significant pace relative to maybe some other industries. That was attractive. The team that we were putting together, I met a number of the team members as early as 2018, actually. The team was starting to put together had a great track record to complement some of my experiences. It had the ingredients, I believe, and plus actually, the patents we acquired, that in a package, had the ingredients for a significant company.
Again, those were the things that brought me into this.
Mark Dlugoss:
Well, I’m reviewing the Visus Therapeutics leadership team, and I’m referring to both the board of directors and advisors. You’ve surrounded yourself with some of the top leaders in both clinical and industry side of ophthalmology. Could you discuss from your perspective what these leaders mean to you and the company in driving Visus, in bringing products, candidates you are developing into market?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. We do have a very, very experienced board. We have an experienced team of advisors, strategic advisors, and also a medical advisory board. Really, what it means is that we have a tremendous amount of talent and experience to draw upon. Very, very supportive board. Again, very supportive and well connected and experienced. Decades and decades of experience in this industry.
When we think about how we’re developing not just our lead program in presbyopia, but other drug candidates, we do have a tremendous amount of support and experience to draw upon as we’re getting into mid stages in some of our preclinical development. Again, obviously, we’re in very late stage in clinical development in presbyopia. It means a lot to have these individuals with the experience they have, and the support and the leadership they’ve shown this industry, to have them attracted to our company. It really gives us a great opportunity to build something meaningful here.
Mark Dlugoss:
Okay, let’s move on to Visus Therapeutics pipeline. The company has several programs in the works. Your lead candidate is Brimochol, a presbyopia correcting eye drop. Can you find some background about Brimochol, its formulations, its mechanism of action, et cetera?
Ben Bergo:
Sure, sure. Brimochol was invented by Dr. Herb Kaufman, and we have patents that we’ve acquired that have underpinned the formulation. This is a combination of two well known ophthalmic APIs, brimonidine tartrate and carbachol. Carbachol is a biotic agent, so it’s known to promote and induce myosis. It brings down the pupil. If I just focus on that API to start with, there are many companies developing presbyopia correcting eye drops based on this mechanism of action, this pinhole effect.
If you’ve ever done any photography, and if you have stopped down on your camera aperture, you focus the different fields, different planes of focus, if you like, get an increase in depth of focus. These might on occasions do that, but do that to your pupil. They bring down your pupil size, and it focuses both the near, the short, if you like, your near vision, but also the long. It can sharpen up distance vision, but obviously gives you back a big gain at the near. Carbachol does that similar to other actives that are out there being developed by other companies.
Then again, we’re combining that with brimonidine tartrate. Brimonidine tartrate has been used for decades in eyecare, as has carbachol. Brimonidine tartrate is still used today, and indicated for lowering intraocular pressure in patients as Alphagan P, sold by Allergan, and also for relieving redness in the eye, and marketed by Bausch and Lomb as Lumify. It’s been used in a number of different ways. We’re combining that again with carbachol. What we found, and what was found in some of the earlier clinical studies is that the brimonidine can promote a more durable response, if you like, in that myotic effect.
The biggest thing we found actually in 2020, we were doing a number of different PD studies and PK studies in rabbits, and we found from one of the final studies, actually, that in the presence of brimonidine carbachol levels that are increased by 40 to 50% in the target tissue in the ancillary body. By having brimonidine on board, we’re potentiating this pinhole effect and giving a longer, more durable improvement in near vision. We’ve also found that with the addition of brimonidine, we can offset some of the side effects you get and can get, not always, but can get from a straight agent myotic.
We believe that we have a tolerable eye drop formulation here, one that provides a long, durable response, a long improvement in near vision. That’s the combination. We studied that in two different formulations in our phase two, one containing BAK, a preservative agent, and one without. We found actually that with the addition of BAK, we didn’t get any additional benefit, if you like, on the pupil or in vision. We’ve taken into our two pivotal studies, what we’re calling Brimochol PF, so preservative free formulation of Brimochol, and we think that will be highly desired by our target patient population.
Mark Dlugoss:
Yeah, was just my next question involving the background. Brimochol has a very interesting background. As you mentioned, was developed by Dr. Herb Kaufman. I know Dr. Kaufman over the years that I’ve worked in ophthalmology, and he has a list of many innovations and discoveries he has developed over his career. Can you elaborate how Brimochol came about for him and how Visus Therapeutics came into the picture in developing the drop?
Ben Bergo:
Yeah, you’re right. Herb has a long career of maybe 40 or 50 year career of ophthalmic innovation, and came to this, I think in his seventies. He’s still doing innovations into his seventies. We’ve had obviously close interactions with him, and he’s a wonderful, wonderful guy. I think he recognized obviously the benefit of these two different actives together in again, one creating this myotic effect, this pinhole effect. Then with brimonidine, enhancing that. Again, we know that brimonidine can offset some of the potential side effects.
We know that it widens the eye, and we see that again in Lumify. It can lessen some of the headache and brow aches that you can get with some myotic agents. I think he recognized some of that back in the 2000s. Then again, filed patents in 2010, in 2012. Then Dr. Abdel Kado, who was a fellow of Herb’s, actually in study in the US, returned to the Middle East, and then conducted a number of effectively investigated initiated studies, and four of those were published.
Again, we had a lot of clinical data to lean on when we formed the company in close interactions with Herb. Again, I think he recognized what these two actives do, brought them together, and filed patents on them. It’s been wonderful to work with him, and it’s a great innovation. It’ll be great for patients as it gets through to the market.
Mark Dlugoss:
Last November, November 20th, 2021, Visus Therapeutics reported positive top line results for its Vivid study, the phase two study of its three novel topical ophthalmic formulations, Brimochol PF and carbachol PF. Can you outline the trial design of the Vivid study and highlights those results, and what is the most compelling findings from the study?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. This was a randomized double masked three site, three arm crossover study across the US, again, in three sites across the US. We enrolled subjects between 45 and 80, so a fairly wide age range. We wanted to study this again in what I’ll call early presbyopes through to people who have more progressed presbyopia. We studied emmitrobe, so plus or minus 0.5 diopter of refractive era. Subjects had to be 20/25 or worse at near, and 20/25 or better at distance to be eligible.
As I mentioned, this was a crossover. We had Brimochol, which was 2.75% carbachol, 0.1% brimonidine, and a hundred parts per million of BAK. Brimochol PF, the same concentrations of carbachol and brimonidine but no BAK, and then carbachol, again, without the BAK and carbachol PF. Two preservative free formulations, and then again one with the BAK. As I mentioned, this was a crossover. Subjects were obviously screened, randomized and randomized one of the three test articles. There was obviously a washout period, and then randomized to a second, and then obviously the final.
Out of the 85 subjects, again, each subject crossing over and receiving each test article once and once only. With that, we’re able to obviously see a lot of data. We learned a lot from the study. The key things we really learned from the study really was if we look at the pupil response, and pupil is really an objective measure for how well the different drugs are doing, we found really three key things from the pupil data.
First of all, all three of these formulations brought the pupil down, from a starting size of four to four and a half millimeters, down to around two to two and a half millimeters of peak, and then extended that out within a therapeutic range for a good seven to nine hours. The last time point we measured was out to nine hours. We also found from the study that the two brimonidine containing formulations that is Brimochol and Brimochol PF really dominated the carbachol PF formulations. We did see brimonidine there adding to the benefit at the pupil.
Then we also found interestingly, and maybe most surprisingly to your question, that the Brimochol and Brimochol PF formulations were virtually identical. They performed both very, very well. We didn’t see any benefit in having the BAK. We removed that and we didn’t take that treatment arm forward. I forgot to mention that we were measuring visual acuity and pupil telemetry across the day, so zero, half an hour, and then one, three, five, seven, nine hours. Again, we were measuring all the way out through a fairly long day in the clinic. That was for the pupil data.
Then on visual acuity, obviously, we were looking to see the proportion of subjects who gained three lines without a one line loss in distance. The FDA has assessed that they want to see subjects again gaining at least 15 letters or three lines without a one line loss or five letter loss of distance. We saw a very, very strong response at the early hours, and we held a durable response out to the latter hours with all three formulations.
We were pleased with the data, and that data then underpinned our decision to again move into our phase three studies in the first quarter. Overall, good data we saw from pupil. Again, good visual acuity data. Again, I guess most surprisingly, we didn’t see that the BAK really made a big difference. We’ve taken into the clinic the two preservative free formulations.
Mark Dlugoss:
So far, have there been any adverse effects to Brimochol to this point in the trials? If so, what were they, and what has been done to address it?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. There are three main side effects, and this is seen again from a number of formulations in development across the category. There is a little burn and sting when you put these eye drops into your eye, and that goes away over a matter of minutes. That’s not atypical. There was a very, very small degree of hyperemia, but very little ocular redness. We did see the brimonidine have some effect there and reduce that sum, but we didn’t see very much ocular redness.
Again, we did see pleasingly that the brimonidine did have a benefit. Then there is some the mild headache and brow ache. Again, across the category for some patients, they will feel a little headache and brow ache, but again, the majority of those are mild, and then they die away within half an hour or 45 minutes. That is something that again, some of the subjects experienced. We’ve seen that also from other drugs in development in this category. Overall, maybe one of the most pleasing things we saw were the patient reported outcomes. They were very, very pleasing.
Whatever tolerability the subjects experienced, they thought that the Brimochol PF formulation had a very desirable duration. We asked them on a scale of zero to 10, zero being too short, and 10 being too long, how do you rate the duration of Brimochol PF? They gave it a five, just right, so it’s sort of a Goldilock’s score. That was great to see, and that was statistically significant. Then we also asked, how many days do you want to use the drug? Zero being never, 10 being every single day. They rated it as eight out of 10. Again, a very, very high score.
That was also statistically significant. We’re seeing that the subjects in the study, and that was in a double masked fashion, those subject reported outcomes at the end of the day. We’re seeing here that whatever they’ve experienced at the start of the day, they’ve sat in the clinic all day long, almost 10 hours. Then at the end of the day, they’re reporting their outcomes, and they’re reporting that yes, they like the formulation. We’re very, very buoyed by those responses. Overall, we think we have a profile that patients are looking for in this category.
Mark Dlugoss:
Can you out outline some of the clinical characteristics of Brimochol? What I’m asking here is, who’s the ideal patient? What’s the proper dosage? How long does it last? I think you’ve already answered that, nine and a half hours. Can you add a second dose if necessary?
Ben Bergo:
The ideal patient, we think that the patient range here will be wide, more progressed presbyopes, I think will be well addressed with this eye drop. Not just early presbyopes, but again, those who are more progressed in their presbyopia, maybe those in their fifties and sixties and seventies, who again have progressed significantly more. Given that we had a very, very high peak miotic effect, that is a very high responder rate, early on, a high responder rate into the latter hours also, we believe that that will address a fairly large proportion of the overall presbyopia population.
We also believe, and again, this is based on a lot of market research we’ve done, we also believe that the ideal profile here is a drug candidate that gets people through a good portion of their workday, all the way through their workday. You want to, ideally, we think that the predominant use case is you put these eye drops in the morning, and they take you through a good part of your day or all the way through the day, and then again, start to tail off in the afternoon or evening.
We think that is the predominant use case. Again, that’s where our formulation development came in in 2020 was to get to a formulation that would do that. We do think that that addresses a good proportion of the presbyopia patients. This will be a once daily dose, so one drop in each eye, either macular or binocular, but at the moment we are studying binocular dosing, so one drop in each eye. Again, that should take you through a good portion of your day. That’s what we’re doing in phase three, and that’s what we’d expect would be the recommended dosing.
Mark Dlugoss:
Well, with the success of the Vivid Study, Visus Therapeutics announced in March that it was launching the first of two pivotal phase threes, BRIO1 and BRIO2 for Brimochol PF, and you’re going to plan to do a study of the safety and efficacy drop. Can you outline what is planned with those trials, and what outcomes are you hoping to achieve when the results are announced?
Ben Bergo:
BRIO1 again, is a crossover design. It’s fairly similar, very, very similar actually to the phase two. We are studying Brimochol PF versus carbachol PF versus brimonidine PF. One of the requirements that is said by the agency to have a combination drug approved is that it must demonstrate what’s called contribution balance. We have to demonstrate that the combination improves upon the two separate monotherapies. What we are studying in that crossover design is that Brimochol PF can beat, if you like, carbachol and brimonidine. That’s that study. That’s the key efficacy study here that is enrolling right now.
We then have BRIO2, and that is really a six month plus six month safety study. That is set up so that we gather sufficient data, actually, sufficient safety data to enable us obviously to file in combination with the efficacy data we have from BRIO1. The thrust of BRIO1 is to demonstrate that Brimochol PF can dominate the carbachol PF and brimonidine PF arms. Then again, we have the safety packet coming from BRIO2.
Those are two studies, and we get to a key readout in the first quarter of next year where we’ll have the data in hand to demonstrate that efficacy outcome.
Mark Dlugoss:
Well, once the phase three trials are completed and the results are reported, what’s the timeline moving forward to FDA approval?
Ben Bergo:
We’re moving forward at this point in time and looking to file in the second half of next year. Then obviously, approval timeline, I can’t speak to obviously.
Mark Dlugoss:
Yeah, the FDA.
Ben Bergo:
Yeah, I think, and I think Allergan was approved, I believe in eight to nine months or so, so shorter maybe than normal, but around eight to nine months. Assuming that same sort of approval timeline for us, hypothetically, then we’d have a mid 2024 approval.
Mark Dlugoss:
With all that’s been said and done so far, what makes Brimochol different clinically from other presbyopic drugs?
Ben Bergo:
Yeah, so again, it’s the combination. Again, combining these two actives. We’re the only company in the phase three studying a combination. We have taken into our two pivotal studies a combination drug. That combination has benefits, as I’ve outlined. It has some benefits in terms of offsetting some side effects. We have a more pleasing tolerability profile. It has this benefit obviously in terms of duration. We get some benefits from this combination, we believe, over the competition.
As I mentioned also, the other key differentiating factor again is this duration that we did see from our phase two. We did see a good long and durable response in near vision, and no loss in distance vision either. I didn’t mention that earlier, but we saw subjects in the study on all three treatment arms, actually, gain two to three letters. These subjects had to be 20/25 or better to be enrolled to be eligible.
Again, we saw a small improvement in distance vision two. There was no myopic shift at all in the Vivid study. We saw big improvements in near vision, small improvement in distance, which was great to see. That package of efficacy, along with a very favorable tolerability profile, I think sets us apart in this category.
Mark Dlugoss:
With Allergan’s Vuity already approved and in the marketplace, and there’s also many, as you know, presbyopia correcting eye drops in development. Where does Brimochol fit in this potentially large market of presbyopia correcting eye drops?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. In terms of time to market, I don’t exactly know, obviously, the filing plans of other companies. Maybe we’re sort of second, third to market, maybe third to market potentially. We do think we will be the longest acting eye drop to market. The first longer acting eye drop to market, and we think that will have certain appeal, again for patients.
In terms of I think where we’re positioned, we’re hoping to obviously gain approval for an eye drop that can move you through a good portion of your workday, so take you through without having to dose again. That’s what we’re aiming to do. We’ll be hopefully the first company to bring that to market again within the field.
Mark Dlugoss:
With Vuity’s launch, that presents a little bit of an opportunity for you. What I’m meaning by this is what does Visus Therapeutics learn regarding what to do and what not to do when Brimochol comes to market?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. I think the key things we’re learning in interactions with our advisors and what we’re seeing in the market is that patient selection is important. Understanding what does the patient want to get out of this eye drop? How do they see this in the mix of their overall vision correction solutions? That’s important, understanding what kind of use pattern, what’s the use case if you like, for the patients? Do they want to use this intermittently? Do they want to use this every single day and again, try and be without their reading glasses?
I think that’s one thing that we’ve seen being important from the first launch. Patient selection is important, really understanding what the patient wants. We also think that obviously, a favorable tolerability profile is going to be important for patients. Again, we hope to see from that, there’s going to be an increased awareness. That’s obviously building through the marketing that’s happened. This category has been talked about for years now, and it is coming to fruition now.
As you’ve mentioned, there are a number of companies now in the first part of this decade, between 2021, let’s call it, and 2025, 2025, there’ll be a number of companies come into market with different products and different offerings, and that will only grow the category. We’ll have to reflect when we get through our key data readouts next year and get through to filing.
We’ll have to take, where the market is at that point in time? Where is the level of awareness? What are people sort of saying that they want? Then choose how we approach that at that point.
Mark Dlugoss:
Okay. Let’s continue to the other programs that Visus Therapeutics is developing in it pipeline, and I’m referring to VT 10 20, which is a topical drug candidate for corneal wound healing. Can you outline this program? What corneal conditions will this drug treat, and what are those properties in this mechanism of action?
Ben Bergo:
Sure. That’s based on that other patent estate that we acquired. Again, these are histatin peptides. Histatin peptides are a novel, naturally occurring, wound healing peptides. They exist in the oral cavity of humans and non-human primates and also in the tear film. There’s been a lot of research done by other researchers that again, we’ve learned from. We’ve conducted some nonclinical research already. What we’ve seen is that this family of peptides may have some potent activity for a number of indications.
I mentioned that again, there’s wound healing activity, antimicrobial activity, antiinflammatory activity that you see from this class of peptides. We see opportunities potentially in diseases such as dry eye, potentially in Fuchs, potentially in neurotrophic keratitis. We are exploring right now a number of different indications, and we look to announce our first indication we’re going after potentially later this year into the first half of next year.
At the moment, this is in preclinical development, but we’re very, very buoyed by what we’ve seen with this class of peptides in iron hands. We didn’t really start to conduct any research in-house on this until around the middle of last year, second quarter of last year. Again, we’re exploring where we think this is going to have the most utility at this point in time. We’re very, very excited by what we’ve seen so far. There may be some novel properties here that can address a number of different anterior segment indications.
Mark Dlugoss:
Sounds very promising. Looking forward to seeing more about that. Also, I noticed that Visus has invested in sustained release drug delivery program. Tell me more about this technology, and how we plan to incorporate it into your pipeline.
Ben Bergo:
Sure. Yeah. We’ve executed an exclusive licensing transaction with DelSiTech, I believe that’s what you’re referring to, which is a Finnish company. This is a silica based matrix, so it’s almost like a gel, if you like, or a molasses kind of a gel. You effectively bring your drug, your API, into this gel, and then we can pre-fill a syringe and then inject this. It has very, very nice sustained release properties.
Upon injection, say, into the vitreous, we expect to see, and we’ve seen some preclinical work on this already, but we expect to see a linear release profile. As this silica matrix breaks down, it releases drug. The goal here is to develop a couple of different drug candidates, one for IOP, lowering glaucoma, one for a potentially advanced form of geographic atrophy, but have these delivered in a sustained release fashion.
Again, as you’d be aware, at the moment, patients need to go into the clinic once every month, once every two months, potentially once every three months with different drugs that are either on market or coming to market. We’d really like to extend that out as far as we can. The ideal thing for the patient would be to go into the clinic maybe once a year, and again, have an injection of whatever the final formulation is. That can help treat disease in a sustained release fashion. That’s that platform. We’re using that across some different therapeutic candidates that are under development, which we’ve also been licensed.
We’ve acquired some patents early from the company inception. We’ve obviously developed some of our own intellectual property. We’ve also even licensed quite a number of patent estates exclusively since forming the company to give us this pipeline we have.
Mark Dlugoss:
You’ve shared quite a bit on what you’re planning to work on. What’s your vision for Visus in, say, in five to 10 years?
Ben Bergo:
Yeah, so I think we have a very good opportunity with the team that we’ve built a great opportunity to bring to market a number of phenomenal drug candidates. We’ve taken a lot of experience the team has had over decades, obviously, learnt from that experience in what’s going to make a really big difference to patients. We are honing that development into our final candidates through the next 12 to 18 months.
Obviously, we’ll update the market as we get to there, but there’s a really great opportunity here to develop some very exceptional candidates for potentially two to three front of the eye indications, presbyopia included. Then again, a couple major back of the eye indications. Both in glaucoma in the retina, and then also in the front of the eye. I think we have a team that can do that. If I look forward, it’s continuing our development with our pipeline.
We start to file our first INDs in late 2023, early 2024. As we go through our major value inflection points in presbyopia with Brimochol, we then again start to file INDs and step into phase one, phase one/two studies in the pipeline. I think we have a really great opportunity with the team and the technologies to bring to markets some therapies, great therapies for patients.
Mark Dlugoss:
That’s great. Well, we’ve covered a lot of information today. Is there anything we’ve missed about Visus Therapeutics that you feel may be important to the listeners to know about the company?
Ben Bergo:
Look, I’ll only say that we’re excited by what we’re doing in presbyopia, and equally as excited as to what we’re doing in our pipeline. Again, we have a very major data readout in the first quarter of next year. I’d say look out for that. Then again, look out for what we are doing in our preclinical development. We will start to release more and more from the pipeline through the back of this year and through next year. We’re excited to share more of that as we make those final selections and choices, and then update the community as we progress.
Very excited by where we’re going. Very, very honored to lead the team we have, and it’s a great opportunity. Presbyopia is a great first indication to address. There’s a lot of people out there who are looking for a drop to help them manage their loss of near vision. It’s great to have the first drug on market now, and we look forward to bringing ours to market as fast as possible. Excited by that.
Mark Dlugoss:
Good. I’m looking forward to hooking up with you later sometime in the future, and learn more about what’s going on at Visus Therapeutics.
Ben Bergo:
Very good. Thank you. I appreciate welcoming me onto the program. Thank you.
Mark Dlugoss:
Okay. Well, that concludes today’s Ophthalmic Project podcast. I want to thank Ben Bergo for spending some time with the Ophthalmic Project discussing Visus Therapeutics’ entry into the presbyopia correction market, as well as the other ophthalmic programs the company has in development. Finally, I want to thank you the listener. Thank you for participating. Have a great day.
