ASCRS Live: Preservative Freedom coalition from Théa Pharmaceutical

Jason Bacharach, MD, and Chris Pearson discussed the Preservative Freedom coalition from Théa Pharmaceutical at the 2023 ASCRS annual meeting in San Diego.

Video transcript

Editor’s note: Transcript lightly edited for clarity.

Jason Bacharach, MD:

Hi, my name is Jason Bacharach. I'm the medical director and founding partner of North Bay Eye Associates in Sonoma County, California. I'm the co-director of glaucoma at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Super excited to be here. We're in San Diego on an absolutely beautiful Sunday at the ASCRS meeting: a lot of colleagues, a lot of great conversation. Really happy to be here with my good friend, Chris Pearson, Chief Commercial Officer of Théa Pharmaceutical, one of our really important partners and growing partners in United States marketplace. And we're here to talk a little bit about what's happening at the meeting and the preservative free coalition that Théa is leading. And I'm going to, I'm just going to turn it over to Chris for a minute just to get his impressions and initial thoughts.

Chris Pearson:

Yeah, thank you very much, Jason. So we kicked off on Friday, the Preservative Freedom coalition, which is industry agnostic, really, healthcare-focused patient advocacy group, working with healthcare societies, patient advocacy groups, and industry to really promote the use of preservative free formulations, where appropriate, in to protect the ocular surface. The event was very well attended. We had a wonderful panel discussion, and then had our industry partners from the Glaucoma Foundation, the Intrepid Eye Society, as well as Dry Eye University, who are the founding members along with Théa. And it's really a great event really highlighting the need for preservative free medications, and Dr. Bacharach was on the panel, and we want to give your thoughts about it.

Jason Bacharach, MD:

Well, I thought it was great. I really appreciated Théa starting this initiative and really making it agnostic to any particular pharmaceutical company or brand. It's really a public service for our patients. It was a great panel. Daryl White led the panel, and it was a great conversation with our corneal colleagues and glaucoma specialists about the benefits for patients, for their ocular health, for subsequent surgical maneuvers that might be needed down the line in the management of the disease. And we are going to have a new preservative-free option that launches here in the United States in the third quarter, and that drug is going to be a preservative-free, the first preservative-free latanoprost agent. It's going to be brand name IYUZEH™. You're going to have it available here this calendar year. And I'm really excited. We ran the clinical studies for its approval some years ago. It was compared against XALATAN®, branded XALATAN®. It did very well on its studies, great tolerability, good efficacy, and so I'm sure you're going to be excited as I am to have that available to our patients. So I, you know, as always, I'd like to wish you a happy and healthy rest of the year and upcoming summer. It's great to be back with friends and colleagues and in person. And thank you, Chris, any last thoughts or comments?

Chris Pearson:

Yeah, we just hope everyone has a great rest of the year, and we really hope that this preservative-free movement moves on. Théa is a leader in preservative-free medications. We have four on the market and more coming so, have a great meeting.