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Imperial Innovations leads £13.5m funding round in retinal technology company

Investment group Imperial Innovations has led a £13.5m funding round in London-based retinal therapeutics company Precision Ocular.

Imperial has committed £6.9m as part of the funding round that also saw investment from pharma services company Consort Medical, international venture capital firm NeoMed and pharmaceutical manufacturer Hovione Scientia Ltd.

Precision, which was founded in 2014 by Tom Cavanagh and Ron Yamamoto, specialise in innovative retinal treatments that are engineered to access small spaces in the eye thus improving the effectiveness of treatment.

Tom, Chief Executive Officer of Precision Ocular, commented: “We are very pleased to have secured this important financing, led by Innovations and joined by other quality investors and strategic partners.

“We are now well positioned to accelerate development of our best-in-class technologies and advance our leading programs into human clinical studies”.

Nigel Pitchford, Chief Investment Officer of Imperial Innovations, hailed the potential of the firm’s treatments when he added: “Precision Ocular provides Innovations with an opportunity to invest in a motivated team that has highly relevant experience in ophthalmology drug delivery, formulation and markets. The team has developed both a novel delivery system and a formulation to match.

“Most ophthalmic drugs are delivered by topical application in eye drops or direct injection into the vitreous humor, but are limited by difficulties in achieving and sustaining therapeutic drug levels.

“Precision Ocular is pioneering an approach that offers tailored drug distribution and a likely reduction in side-effects, by virtue of the fact that the active drug will not contact the whole eye.

“Their approach packages the drugs in a novel form that allows easy administration, ocular distribution and controlled release. We believe Precision Ocular has the potential to develop a platform technology with broad applicability.”