Info

Acucela Inc. is a clinical stage biotech company discovering new drug therapies for eye diseases. Neurodegenerative retinal diseases such as macular degeneration, Stargardt's disease, retinitis pigmentosa and glaucoma, significantly affect quality of life for over 50 million people worldwide, and there is a drastic lack of therapies available. Until now, ophthalmic drug discovery technologies have been very limited. Acucela uses proprietary OcuScreenTM disease-specific assays and other technologies to identify and discover compounds that have safety and efficacy in treating these diseases. These technologies represent a tremendous breakthrough in ophthalmic drug discovery. Acucela Inc. has two divisions: The Drug Discovery Division serves to discover and develop drug compounds to treat retinal eye diseases. ACU-3223 is currently in a Phase I clinical trial. The OcuScreenTM Division provides services to pharmaceutical companies and other customers, using Acucela's proprietary technologies to generate data on custom drug compounds. Three papers have been published on OcuScreen assays (see the "news" section for more details).