Verséa Ophthalmics, LLC, a division of Verséa Health, Inc., and Celularity Inc. have agreed to an exclusive U.S. commercialization deal for Celularity’s BIOVANCE and BIOVANCE 3L Ocular products.
Let’s start with these U.S.-based companies.
Verséa Health is a healthcare company that provides personalized clinical and therapeutics in eye care, including diagnostics and biologic solutions for diagnosing, treating, and managing ocular conditions such as ocular surface disease (OSD) and pterygium surgery.
As a clinical-stage biotechnology company, Celularity, develops cryopreserved off-the-shelf placental-derived allogeneic cell therapies for cancer, autoimmune, infectious, and degenerative diseases; its pipeline includes both clinical and biomaterials.
Of note, BIOVANCE and BIOVANCE 3L Ocular are both dehydrated, decellularized allografts intended for use as a ringless amniotic membrane covering that provides an extracellular matrix.
Talk more about Celularity’s science.
The company uses the placenta—a material with low potential for provoking an immune response—in order to develop allogeneic cell therapies.
Via proprietary technology, ethically-sourced biomaterials are converted into potential therapies. According to Celularity, a single placenta is “capable of yielding 100 to 100,000 doses, depending on the therapeutic.
See here for more details on the company’s science and technology process.
What about these products?
Through this exclusive commercialization agreement, Verséa Ophthalmics will be able to distribute to eyecare providers (ECPs) both BIOVANCE and BIOVANCE 3L Ocular—which are single- and three- (3L) layer allografts designed as biological membrane coverings that provide an extracellular matrix.
Refresh: a biological (or amniotic) membrane is intended to be placed directly on the ocular surface to create a protective barrier and support rehabilitation from various ocular diseases.
Be a little more specific about the BIOVANCE 3L Ocular allograft.
The BIOVANCE 3L Ocular is acellular, consisting of three layers of an amniotic membrane (which supports treatment for advanced ocular surface disease [OSD]), and is designed to protect the underlying tissue / preserve tissue plane boundaries.
What can it be used for?
A number of corneal and conjunctival-related injuries like corneal epithelial defects, pterygium repair, neurotrophic keratitis, fornix reconstruction, to name a few.
Gotcha. So what does this agreement involve?
Per the companies’ announcement, Verséa Ophthalmics will distribute both BIOVANCE and BIOVANCE 3L Ocular products for OSD treatment as well as ocular surgical applications.
Any financial details?
Nope; financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Executive input?
According to Verséa Ophthalmics President Rob Sambursky, MD, the deal enables the company to, “offer a decellularized, ringless, advanced wound healing option to drive forward innovation for [OSDs].”
And lastly .. didn’t we just hear news from Verséa recently?
Indeed we did! The company also just launched its Tear-based Point-of-Care (T-POC) TOTAL Immunoglobulin (IgE) Immunoassay Kit for OSD—the first of two tests being shipped out as part of an FDA-approved novel test platform for OSD.
Read here for more.