News: OPT Opthea Priced IPO In U.S. Of 8.6 Million American Depositary Shares, page-11

Some excerpts from a Bioshares article earlier this week that maybe of interest to holders:

Opthea CEO Megan Baldwinsaid that the partnering process was very much continuing even though the companynow has the funds to get to the Phase III top line results.

Co-formulation with either Lucentis or Eylea, or with a biosimilars, has also been enabledthrough the additional funds that have been sourced. Baldwin said that strategic potentialpartners also include companies seeking to move into the ophthalmology market.However the development of a co-formulated product would trail the development ofOPT-302. (Currently OPT-302 needs to be injected sequentially following either Lucentisor Elyea.)Opthea expects to file an IND for an OPT-302 therapy co-formulated with a VEGF-Ainhibitor in H2 2021. If the company partners with a biosimilar drug developer, then thetiming of the co-formulation program would likely be more in its control.

New Chair AppointedOpthea recently appointed Dr Jeremy Levin, a well-credentialled, pharmaceutical industryexecutive as chairman of its board. Levin was formerly Global Head of StrategicAlliances for Novartis. Of interest is the deal secured by Ophthotech Corporation in 2014with Novartis for access to its late stage candidate, Fovista, for the treatment of wetAMD. After listing in 2013 raising US$165 million, Novartis licensed the ex-US rights forUS$330 million in upfront (US$200 million) and short-term milestones (US$130 million)and US$700 million in other milestones.

Additional information fro Australian newspaper article also from earlier in the week:

And while the pandemic made the Nasdaq listing more difficult, Dr Baldwin said she did not anticipate coronavirus complications when contract research companies working for Opthea began recruiting patients to the clinical trials early next year.“Worldwide there was a slowdown in trials when the pandemic first hit, but I think everyone globally is now getting back to a new normal,” she said. But because OPT-302 will be administered alongside patients’ current treatments, she said, the pandemic should not affect the rollout of the trials.“These are highly debilitating diseases, so physicians and patients recognise that they need to stay on their medication and they do to come to their doctors or they will have long-term and potentially irreparable vision loss,” Dr Baldwin said.“So for companies like ours, those clinical trials are up and running and they’re back on track.

I also remember Megan Baldwin mentioning earlier in the year that there was not likely to be too much competition for trial patients as many of the larger trial studies in this area had been completed and there was not too much in the pipeline. Maybe the stars are going to align for Opthea