By Mary Welch

In what may be one of the largest rounds of start-up financing, EyeTech Pharmaceuticals Inc. raised $34 million to fund its work to find new drugs to reduce and prevent vision loss.

"We are passionate about these diseases that cause blindness and there's been a lack of an intense effort from other companies," said David Guyer, the company's CEO. "It's such a large unmet medical need, and growing with the baby boomers."

Schroeder Life Sciences, of Boston, led the round. Merrill Lynch, of New York, participated.

"We were so successful in the round because we already have gathered senior people to the team," Guyer said. "We are hiring others who will fill out our executive ranks. We have an impressive infrastructure. We also intend to in-license drugs as technology, and are in final negotiations with a laboratory for a drug that may be out in 18 months."

The success of QLT PhotoTherapeutics Inc. also helped provoke the interest of investors, Guyer said. "QLT was a small company with no drugs, and now they have a $4 billion market cap," he said. "Investors are realizing that this is a large unmet medical need, with no good treatment. They are realizing that the FDA is very interested in this indication and will expedite treatments. The FDA wants to help these patients."

QLT, of Vancouver, British Columbia, received FDA approval for its light-activated therapy, Visudyne, to treat wet age-related macular degeneration. QLT is in a partnership with Atlanta-based CIBA Vision, the eye care unit of Novartis AG, of Basel, Switzerland, (See BioWorld Today, April 14, 2000, p. 1.)

New York-based EyeTech has one product, EYE001, which was licensed from Gilead Sciences Inc., of Foster City, Calif., in Phase Ia trials. EYE001 comes from a class of drugs called aptamers, which are chemically synthesized short strands of RNA. Aptamers assume 3-dimensional shapes that allow high-affinity binding to the targets for which they are designed.

The trials are for the treatment of the wet form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in adults over 50. AMD is a disease in which abnormal blood vessels grow behind the retina. These small vessels leak blood and eventually destroy the retina. Currently there is no effective anti-angiogenic drug to prevent the loss of vision caused by AMD. An estimated 15 million people in the U.S have been diagnosed with this disease.

"There has been extensive research showing that vascular endothelial growth factor is a most important causative factor for this condition," Guyer said. "Our drug blocks VEGF, and the hope is that it will prevent progression of this disease."

VEGF is a protein that stimulates the growth of the endothelial cells that make new blood vessels. EYE001 has been shown to act as an antibody that blocks VEGF, thus preventing the growth of ocular blood vessels and vessel leakage in the eye.

EYEOO1 should start Phase Ib trials next month and possibly enter a pivotal Phase II/III trial early next year, Guyer said.

The company started in February, but already has a "world-renowned group of scientific advisers," he said. Among the board members are Samir Patel, director of residency and retina services at the University of Chicago, and Marty Glick, chief financial officer at Advanced Medicine, of San Francisco. The board's chairman is John McLaughlin, formerly vice president of South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc. and the current president of Corgentech, a San Francisco-based privately held pharmaceutical company.

Guyer is the director of residency training at Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital and clinical associate professor of ophthalmology at Cornell University Medical Center in New York.