A company with a medical device to detect early onset of age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in adults ages 50 or older, is raising $2 million in a series A preferred financing round to commercialize its diagnostic tool, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year.
Apeliotus Vision Science is a spinout of Apeliotus Technologies, a Georgia-based company that develops and commercializes medical devices based on university inventions. So far it has raised $450,000 in the current financing round from Ben Franklin Technology Partners and the Life Sciences Incubator of Central Pennsylvania. The company has an office in the Hershey Center for Applied Research and its chief science officer, Greg Jackson, is on staff at the Penn State Hershey Eye Center.
It hopes to market the macular degeneration diagnostic test to optometrists and ophthalmologists by the end of the year, CEO John Edwards told MedCity News in a phone interview.
Although there is no cure for macular degeneration, early detection of the disease, which generally occurs after age 50, is critical to avoid or at least delay the onset of blindness.
The disease affects 30 million people globally. Frost & Sullivan estimates the market for age-related macular degeneration is a $7 billion, though that includes diagnosis and treatment of the disease.
The technology for the test was licensed from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The dark adaptation test for age-related macular degeneration — a test measuring the length of time it takes for the eyes to adjust to darkness — is reimbursed by health insurers, Medicare and Medicaid. That was the reason the medical device company targeted the U.S. market first, as opposed to other companies that find it easier to seek approval from European regulators first.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
