Manchester Uni enters licensing agreement with US biotech firm Acucela

The University of Manchester has entered into an agreement with a US firm that could partially restore the sight of hundreds of thousands of blind people around the world.

As part of the agreement, Seattle-based biotech firm Acucela Inc. will seek to commercialise technology developed at the university that could improve the vision of people with degenerative retinal conditions like Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), an inherited disease that causes progressive degeneration of the eye’s photoreceptor cells.

The deal with the University of Manchester will see Acucela running clinical trials, and eventually commercialising, therapy developed by researcher Dr. Jasmina Cehajic-Kapetanovic alongside Professors Paul Bishop and Robert Lucas.

Acucela’s chairman, president and CEO, Dr. Ryo Kubota, said of the license arrangement: “We are extremely excited to enter into this collaboration with the university and to begin the important development work needed to unlock the potential of optogenetic gene therapy to improve visual function in patients who have lost much of their vision as well as their hope.”

RP is believed to affect one in every 4,000 across Europe, the US and Asia.

Dr. Paul Bishop, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Manchester, said: “This is a very exciting therapeutic approach as the blind mice we treated could see surprisingly well in normal lighting conditions, and we think the approach may be safe as we are putting a normal human retinal protein back into the retina, but in cells that don’t normally make it.

“We are delighted at the prospect of working with Acucela towards restoring some visual function in patients who have severe visual loss from RP and similar conditions.”

The deal was negotiated on behalf of the university by UMIP, its technology transfer office.

UMIP’s director of operations, Dr. Rich Ferrie, said: “We believe that Acucela is the ideal partner to develop a gene therapy for RP based on this ground-breaking science.

“The licensing arrangement has the potential to deliver significant economic return to the University if the clinical trials and commercialisation programme are successful.”

He added: “More importantly the signing of this agreement represents a potentially pivotal moment and offers real hope for millions of RP patients around the world.”

The treatment was first reported in the scientific journal Current Biology in June 2015, followed by New Scientist magazine in August 2015.