David Tanzer, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Lexitas Pharma Services, spoke with Ophthalmology 360 about the exciting advancements in retina care, particularly cell and gene therapy options in development.
David Tanzer, MD:
Hi. Dave Tanzer. I’m the Chief Medical Officer for Lexitas Pharma Services. I’m an ophthalmologist by training, been in the space for 30 years and privileged to be the CMO of Lexitas. We’re 100% focused on ophthalmology, front of the eye, back of the eye, devices in pharma, helping to support sponsors, bringing the latest innovations to patients in need. What really excites me about the space, is the diversity of what we’re hoping to accomplish by facilitating studies for sponsors. The retina space in particular is very unique. It’s led by the strategics who are focused on the bread and butter indications of like neovascular AMD, DR/DME, looking at maybe extended durability of intravitreal injections of anti-VEGFs. Maybe the exception to that is going to be AbbVie’s acquisition of Regenxbio a couple of years back. Of course, we all know Regenxbio was working on novel approaches to these bread and butter indications through a gene therapy approach and whether it’s a suprachoroidal injection or a subretinal injection, that’s novel in terms of looking at these bread and butter indications of DR/DME, AMD, from a gene therapy approach.
Really, the true innovation, I think, is coming from these small startups, the scrappy small companies looking to really revolutionize what we’re doing in ophthalmology. Companies like Opus, Ocugen, Ikarovec, and many others like that, that are looking to really revolutionize how we’re taking care of patients through a gene therapeutic approach, maybe cell and gene therapy, through various delivery mechanisms. We at Lexitas are privileged to support these companies doing innovative work.
Maybe a couple of exceptions to the gene therapeutic approach, is what Adverum is doing and 4DMT, intravitreal injections of gene therapeutic approaches to create biofactories within the eye for a one-and-done approach to patient care. Wouldn’t that be great for patients to no longer have to go to the retina specialist office every month or every 2 months to get the injections, if they can have a one-and-done. So long as it’s safe and effective. We’ve known from our brolucizumab days about 5 years ago that safety is paramount. The ophthalmology community is certainly focused on safety first. You can’t have an efficacious product without safety, so as long as it’s safe and effective, in that order, it’s good for patients. We’re very privileged to be supporting the companies, again, that are bringing these latest technologies and innovations for patients in need.
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