FDA just accepted an application for modern Re. It's an experimental gene therapy designed to restore vision in patients with retinitis pigmentosa. Joining me now is the woman behind it. Sulagna Bhattacharya, co-founder and CEO of Nano Scope Therapeutics. Welcome.
Thank you so much for having me here.
I understand that you have a personal experience with RP. Can you share it with us?
Yes. Um, this mission is deeply personal to me. I came from a family affected by retinitis pigmentosa. So I have seen how progressive vision loss changes not only one person's life, but entire family's future. Um, it can affect the independence, work, mobility, confidence, the dignity. Um, you know, that's the reason I co-founded this company with our co-founder, doctor Samarinda Mohanty with one mission that we have to restore vision for this patient who are told that there is absolutely no option once you lose your vision, you just have to live with it.
And I understand that RP has traditionally been difficult to treat. Why is that.
So? P is actually not one disease. This is a genetically heterogeneous group of inherited retinal disease caused by hundreds of mutations across the dozens of different genes, all covering on the same outcome that progressive degeneration of photoreceptor cells and that initiate the neurologic signal we call sight.
Historically, the field has been always approaching to treat the genes, or they are trying to correct the genes. That's been the reason behind you losing your photoreceptor. In that way, you can only target certain population. The only approved therapy currently available for RP is only targeting 1 to 2% of the total population.
So from day one, it was our mission to figure out like if you are affected by an unknown gene like my family, what will happen to those patients? So we need to find a sustainable cure that can impact all these patients that who are losing vision and going through this devastating journey. So that was the focus.
And after multiple trial, including a randomized control trial, we have we are demonstrating the safety and the efficacy. And we are very hopeful that we'll be able to get it to the finish line, to take it to the patient.
And how does how does nano scope therapeutics technology work?
So.
You know, this is what we are doing. We are, um.
Delivering uh, opsin or it's an optogenetic molecule. It's highly engineered. That works in ambient light. Like where I'm sitting. It's very fast. Um, and so you don't see any kind of blur and what it is doing, it's actually going to your, uh, like, retinal cells on bipolar cell and making it in de facto photoreceptor.
What happened in this ID or retinitis pigmentosa? Patients are losing their natural photoreceptor. We are not fixing those natural photoreceptor. But the next layer of cell in retina is called bipolar cell. There are over ten millions there. They usually stay intact even in the very late stage of the disease.
We are making those photoreceptors who are not light sensitive by nature, making them your de facto photoreceptor so that you can gain some of the abilities back.
Ray Sulgana Bhattacharya, co-founder and CEO of Nano Scope Therapeutics, thank you for joining us on taking stock.
Thank you so much for your time.
