Presbyopia
Presbyopia is the gradual loss of your eyes' ability to focus on nearby objects. Symptoms of Presbyopia typically include difficulty to see things clearly up-close, blurred vision at normal reading distance, seeing clearly in dim light, and suffering from headaches and eye strain.
Accommodation is the ability of the eye to increase its refractive power of the crystalline lens to focus near objects on the retina. Presbyopia occurs when the accommodative ability of the eye decreases irreversibly due to a loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens when aging.
It is estimated that over 400 million people in China are impacted by presbyopia, significantly influencing a person’s day-to-day quality of life. Presbyopia can be corrected with eyeglasses, contact lenses or surgery, however, there remains large unmet need in presbyopia for a non-invasive, reversible pharmacological treatment.
Our partner, LENZ Therapeutics (LENZ) is developing potential noninvasive, reversible pharmacological treatments for presbyopia, LNZ100 (aceclidine) and LNZ101 (aceclidine + brimonidine).
Aceclidine is a small molecule acetylcholine receptor agonist that causes pupil contraction, also called miosis, creating a pinhole effect that improves near vision. Aceclidine’s unique mechanism of action (MOA), in which miosis is decoupled from myopic shift, has potential to target a broad patient population.
In clinical trials, LENZ has shown that near-vision improvement correlates with aceclidine’s ability to maintain a targeted pinhole pupil of 1.5 mm to 2 mm for at least seven hours. There was a slight trend toward net gain in best corrected distance vision. In addition, aceclidine was well tolerated with no serious adverse events and with mild discomfort on instillation as the most common side effect.
LENZ’s INSIGHT clinical trial will serve as a confirmatory lead-in for its Phase 3 trial that is planned for 2H 2022. As part of presbyopia clinical development pathway in China, JIXING will initiate a Phase 3 clinical study for LNZ100/101 in 2023.
For further information about our partner, LENZ Therapeutics, please visit lenz-tx.com
1 Song P, Xia W, Wang M, et al. Variations of dry eye disease prevalence by age, sex, and geographic characteristics in China: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of global health (2018); 8(2):020503.
2 Liu, Ning-ning, et al. Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Dry Eye Symptom in Mainland China: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Ophthalmology (2014); 2014(3):748654–8.
3 Jie Y, Xu L, Wu YY, Jonas JB. Prevalence of dry eye among adult Chinese in the Beijing Eye Study. Eye (Lond) (2009); 23(3):688-93.
4 Liu, Sun, Zhang, et al (2020). "Consensus of Chinese dry eye experts: Definition and Classification." Chin J Ophthalmol 56(6):418-422
5 Liu, Sun, Zhang, et al (2020). "Consensus of Chinese dry eye experts: treatment." Chin J Ophthalmol 56(12):907-913
