Laureate Completes Drug Product for Trials

Laureate Pharma and Iconic Therapeutics, a developer of ophthalmic products, have completed the manufacture of the first GMP lot of hI-con1 recombinant Fc-Factor VII fusion protein for the potential treatment of macular degeneration and other diseases.

“We are very excited that Iconic Therapeutics now has material to test this new therapy for patients with macular degeneration and other diseases,” said Robert J. Broeze, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Laureate Pharma. “This is a testimonial to our strong partnership with Iconic and our expertise in working with fusion proteins.”

“With clinical material now in hand, we have moved a giant step forward in our plans for hI-con1. We are excited about its prospects as a novel and powerful approach for the therapy of wet AMD,” said Kirk Dornbush, president of Iconic Therapeutics. “We are very pleased with the strong working relationship that we established with Laureate Pharma.”

The hI-con1 recombinant protein is designed to specifically attack and destroy pathological blood vessels (PBVs) with no effect on normal blood vessels. In addition, hI-con1 is thought to act differently from other wet AMD treatments, which reduce the effects of pathological blood vessel invasion into the eye but do not kill those blood vessels. In studies with mice and pigs, a single injection of hI-con1 into the eye resulted in dramatic reduction of pathological blood vessels.

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