Billion-dollar gamble

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last December, Forbes published a feature article about Megan Baldwin’s work to improve the antiangiogenic treatment of eye diseases. I hope she wins her billion-dollar gamble not only because the drug in question was invented here at the University of Helsinki. The drug is called OPT-302 or with its INN name sozinibercept. The patent lists Kari Alitalo and me as the inventors. The drug was initially designed (under the name VGX-300) for cancer treatment, but - perhaps luckily - never really took off as such because it inhibits not only VEGF-D but also VEGF-C, which is needed in the body’s immune response against the cancer. So far, nobody has been able to separate the prometastatic and the proimmunogenic propeties of VEGF-C.

Opthea on Michael’s Domain

Billion-dollar gamble