BELFAST, Northern Ireland—Re-Vana Therapeutics Ltd, a privately-held specialty drug delivery company developing sustained-release therapeutics for the treatment of vision-threatening ocular diseases, announced the closure of its Series A round with $11.9 million in funding, an oversubscription of $4 million. The financing was led by Visionary Ventures. Additional investors include ExSight Ventures, InFocus Capital Partners and existing U.K. investors, Qubis Ltd, Co-Fund NI, and TechStart Ventures. The proceeds will advance the development of Re-Vana’s novel and proprietary photo-crosslinked EyeLief, EyeLief-SD and OcuLief biodegradable drug delivery technologies and will enable expansion of the company’s operations and development teams, Re-Vana said.

The company asserted that with the successful completion of key nonclinical ocular safety, tolerability and efficacy studies, it has demonstrated that its platform can achieve six months or greater sustained delivery of an anti-VEGF biologic at therapeutically-relevant levels with high drug loading, controlled burst release, and a favorable degradation profile. “Re-Vana’s platform therefore has the potential to enable sustained drug delivery via non-surgical administration in office-based settings to treat ocular disease, overcoming several long-standing limitations and challenges in the field,” the company stated.
 
In conjunction with this financing, Re-Vana’s board of directors has been further strengthened by the appointments of Robert Avery, MD, of Visionary Ventures and InFocus Capital Partners, as board member, and Michael O’Rourke, president and CEO of Re-Vana Therapeutics, as board chair.