KalVista Pharmaceuticals joins European consortium focused on novel eye treatments
Consortium supported by €1.66m grant from EU Seventh Framework Programme
KalVista Pharmaceuticals, a UK-based ophthalmology company with a focus on diabetic macular edema (DME), is joining a group of academic and industry researchers in the four-year 3D-NET (Drug Discovery and Development of Novel Eye Therapeutics) project.
The project aims to develop new drugs for the treatment of ocular disease associated with inflammation, neovascularisation, edema and degeneration, through the complementary capabilities of the partners. The project will be funded through a €1.66m Marie Curie Industry-Academia Pathways and Partnerships (IAPP) grant from the EU Seventh Framework Programme (612218/3D-NET).
The consortium partners, in addition to KalVista, include leading researchers in eye diseases, ocular disease models and synthetic chemistry at University College Dublin (Ireland), Universidad de Valladolid (Spain), RenaSci (Nottingham, UK) and Gadea Grupo Farmacéutico (Spain).
KalVista brings expertise in ocular diseases resulting from diabetes, an extensive library of novel compounds already screened for activity in the eye, and proven capabilities in the development of drugs from target identification through to in vitro pharmacology and safety.
'The consortium brings a unique combination of skills and opportunities to overcome barriers to ocular drug discovery and development and advance new therapies for a range of eye diseases,' said Andrew Crockett, KalVista CEO.
'In addition, this project will provide KalVista with access to new ophthalmology projects and dovetails nicely with our internal programmes focused on intravitreal and oral plasma kallikrein inhibitors for DME. The intravitreal programme is advancing rapidly to the first in human trial, expected to start in early 2014, and we continue to progress our programme focused on novel oral drugs for DME.'
