Billion-dollar gamble

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 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.

However, VEGF-C and VEGF-D have been suspected to be responsible for neovascular eye diseases (such as wet age-related macular degeneration, AMD) that fail to respond to anti-VEGF-A treatments (such as aflibercept or bevacizumab). Unsurprisingly, Sozinibercept is used in combination with anti-VEGF-A drugs. The results from clinical phase I and II trials have been very encouraging, but typically only the phase III trials answer the question of whether the drugs work well enough to justify asking the FDA and EMA for a market authorization.
The first results for the OPT-302 phase III studies are expected for Q2/2025, and the share price of Opthea has started to incrementally recover since last summer, indicating that at least some investors think that this gamble could have a happy ending. Helsinki University sold the IP for this drug to Circadian in exchange for shares. That might or might not have been a good decision depending on the outcome of the phase III trials. I keep my fingers crossed as I am still waiting to receive my 15% inventor's share from my university, which the Finnish law allocates as an incentive for innovation to inventors employed by universities.