SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, MediPrint™ Ophthalmics, an emerging San Diego-based clinical stage eye care pharmaceutical company focused on helping protect sight, announces enlightening findings from its primary market research with optometrists and ophthalmologists related to contact lens drug delivery and its proprietary pipeline of assets. Key learnings from the market study included an acknowledgment of the relative inadequacy of eye drops, today’s standard of care, because of low compliance, an almost universal desire to find better ways to treat patients and a high likelihood of prescribing MediPrint™ lenses for their patients when the lenses become available.
The qualitative research conducted by Step Ahead Knowledge Acquisition included leading eye care professionals across North America. A combination of twenty optometrists and ophthalmologists participated in focus groups. Participants discussed patient adoption, market access, pricing and practitioner willingness to prescribe related to MediPrint’s proprietary assets and compared them to current therapies. After reading the MediPrint glaucoma and dry eye product concepts, the majority of the eye care professionals in this study indicated they would “definitely” or “very likely” prescribe the MediPrint lenses to appropriate patients. These professionals stated that 20-30% of their diagnosed patients may benefit from these lenses initially, with a possibility of increasing this percentage after reviewing clinical results.
This data aligns with prior secondary, independent patient research from Johns Hopkins University showing that 56% – 59% of glaucoma patients would accept contact lens to treat their disease if they made glaucoma surgery unnecessary or were more effective than eye drops.
“The recognized lack of compliance with eye drops today makes drug delivery with contact lenses a game changer,” said Walt Whitley, OD, Director of Optometric Services at Virginia Eye Consultants and a member of the Company’s Scientific Advisory Board.
“Some patients will benefit greatly from the convenience of MediPrint lenses,” added participant Alena Reznik, MD, Co-Founder at Glaucoma Care Center, a premier glaucoma-focused practice in Newport Beach, CA. “And, younger patients with mild or moderate glaucoma or dry eye may be highly motivated to enhance their adherence more easily considering their lifestyle.”
While the majority of MediPrint™’s pipeline is focused on the optometric market (mild/moderate glaucoma, dry eye, allergy), the Company recently received a patent for a novel post-cataract surgery contact lens that will target the ophthalmology market. The post-cataract surgery lens may be able to deliver a combination corticosteroid, NSAID and antibiotic treatment from a single lens. Ophthalmologists will apply the lens after the cataract surgery and patients can wear the lens for one week or longer to deliver the medication, instead of needing to use multiple eye drops every day.
“This patent addressing an unmet need in the ophthalmology market allows us to confidently expand our proprietary pipeline to better serve more eye care professionals, so they can help more patients protect their sight,” commented Dan Myers, CEO of MediPrint Ophthalmics. “The development of a post-cataract surgery therapy with a MediPrint lens will help ophthalmologists and their patients improve compliance by progressing beyond traditional eye drops.”
About MediPrint™ Ophthalmics
MediPrint™ Ophthalmics (formerly Leo Lens Pharma) is an emerging San Diego-based clinical stage eye care pharmaceutical company focused on helping protect sight by developing and commercializing a proprietary ocular drug delivery portfolio. The Company is currently advancing its lead asset, a unique and complete glaucoma treatment, to the clinic while continuing to build out its product portfolio for dry eye and for allergy, and subsequently for other anterior and posterior segment conditions. Using its proprietary MediPrint process, MediPrint Ophthalmics will initially commercialize a drug-eluting, comfort-enhancing, preservative-free contact lens to treat millions of glaucoma patients worldwide. While eye drops have been around for over 40 years and remain the standard of care for over 90% of patients, they have only around a 50% compliance rate. This leads millions to suffer from disease progression and thousands to suffer from preventable blindness. There is a large unmet need for a better non-invasive treatment option in this $4B U.S. market. MediPrint Ophthalmics’ patented MediPrint process offers a unique value proposition for patients, practitioners, strategic partners and payers.
For more information, please visit www.mediprintlens.com.
