Aurion Biotech has raised $120 million to advance its cell therapy for an eye disorder that affects millions of people. The startup is a spinoff of Seattle eye care company CorneaGen, and is located in Seattle, Boston and Tokyo.
Funds will be disbursed based on the company meeting key clinical and operational milestones.
Degeneration of the cornea with age or disease can result in a condition called corneal edema secondary to endothelial dysfunction. Associated with impaired, hazy vision and ultimately blindness, the condition affects about 4% of people over age 40 in the U.S.
Current treatment involves corneal transplantation, a complex surgical procedure. One healthy donor cornea is required to treat each diseased cornea, and many people forgo treatment.
CorneaGen, which sells products for eye surgery, spun out Aurion to develop a cell therapy to address the limitations of current treatment procedures. The therapy is based on technology Aurion licensed in 2020 from the Kyoto Prefecture University of Medicine. There, professor of ophthalmology Shigeru Kinoshita and his colleagues developed a way to make cells in culture to treat the condition.
In 2018, Kinoshita published his technique, treating patients using cultured corneal endothelial cells. All 11 patients injected with the cells had restored transparency to their cornea and nine had improved visual acuity, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Up to 100 eyes can be treated with material from a single donor, and the injection process is less complex than surgery, according to Aurion.
