AAO 2023: Neurotech's encapsulated cell therapy, NT-501

Rich Small, CEO of Neurotech, spoke with Ophthalmology Times about the company's development of encapsulated cell therapy, NT-501, at this year's American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting.

Video Transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Rich Small:

Hi, I'm Rich Small, CEO of Neurotech. It's my pleasure to be here to give you an update on Neurotech. We're developing a really cool technology, it's called encapsulated cell therapy. And in encapsulated cell therapy, we take RPE cells, we genetically modify them to release a therapeutic factor. And the cells are encapsulated in a semipermeable membrane, which allows these therapeutic factors to actually release into the back of the eye, while also allowing nutrients to continuously nourish these cells. And then furthermore, it also prevents the immunoresponse from occurring. So actually, a lot of really cool elements to this technology.

Our first ECT product that we're in clinical development with is called NT-501. And what NT-501 does, is it releases the neurotrophic factor CNTF. And what CNTF is, it's a well-known neuroprotective of keeping, keeping the photoreceptors healthy. And our first clinical, our most advanced clinical program that we're developing NT-501 for is for the orphan disease called macular telangiectasia, MacTel. And late last year, we actually just completed two Phase III studies in MacTel. And studying the, the therapy against the disease itself, and what we found, the results were the treated group was significantly slowed down the progression of disease versus control. So it's something very exciting for us. And we're very excited about our technology.