10 Feb 2025
Alephoson’s CEO and Founder, Dr. Benjamin Lee, was interviewed by the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST (SCMP), a leading Hong Kong newspaper, on Eye-Drug Delivery Technology and Clinical Trials.
Read the full article here
Title: Hong Kong biotech start-up Alephoson eyes international trial for eye-drug delivery
Eric Ng
Published: 9:30am, 10 Feb 2025
A Hong Kong biotech start-up is working with a number of university partners to conduct global clinical trials that could lead to a better way of delivering drugs for prevalent eyediseases. Alephoson Biopharmaceuticals, established in 2019, has developed a technology to combine a proprietary cell-penetration peptide (CPP) compound with biologic medication that is currently used to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetes-related macular edema (DME). If planned clinical trials are successful, this could result in the commercialization of a medication that can be administered via eyedrops instead of an injection into the cavity at the back of the eye, according to Benjamin Lee, a founder and CEO of Alephoson, which is based in the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park. “As a research-and-development-focused company, we are forging partnerships with university hospitals in Hong Kong, mainland China, Asia and the United States on our planned clinical trials,” Lee said. “Upon completion of a preclinical toxicity study in around 12 months, our target is to request authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration to conduct Phase 1 and 2a investigational drug trials by the first quarter of next year.” The idea of using CPP as a drug delivery system originated from Professor Wei Gang, an Alephoson co-founder, who is deputy director of the Department of Pharmaceutics at Shanghai’s Fudan University. “As a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland in the US in 2008, I learned to design peptides as a conduit for drug delivery and thought of applying that in ophthalmology,” Wei said. “Subsequent experiments showed particularly good results on safety and efficacy penetrating into the back of the eye.” Dr. Marten Brelen, an Alephoson scientific adviser, is the principal investigator on the planned Phase 1 trial with AMD patients on safety, side effects, best dosage, and treatment timing. It will be funded by a grant under the Hong Kong government’s General Research Fund for supporting university investigations. Currently, the main component of first-line drugs for AMD and DME is anti-vascular endothelial growth factors (anti-VEGFs), which are far superior compared to second-line laser and steroid treatments, because of better a safety profile, lower side effect risks and better visual acuity outcomes,” he said.
“The challenge of anti-VEGFs is that the molecules are too large to be given as eyedrops, hence patients are burdened with having to endure regular needle injections into the back of the eye, typically for four to five years.” Brelen is an associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is also an eye surgeon at the Prince of Wales Hospital and the Hong Kong Eye Hospital. The eye injections carry a risk of potentially serious side effects, including infection, cataract and retinal detachment, according to the UK’s Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. In Hong Kong, they cost around HK$10,000 (US$1,284) for each shot and are not paid for by the public health system, Brelen said. If patients miss or delay treatment for slowing or stopping abnormal growth of blood
vessels that leak damaging fluids into the light-sensitive tissues of the eye, they risk visual deterioration. Alephoson plans to conduct its first clinical trial involving 40 to 60 DME patients at university hospitals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and the US, Lee said. It will be led by Professor Nguyen Quan at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University. Alephoson is close to completing its Series A fundraising that seeks to raise US$10 million, which would fund preclinical and Phase 1/2a clinical work, he said. AMD is the most common cause of vision loss among people age 50 and older, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Globally, about 1.85 million people were estimated to be blind due to AMD in 2020, while another 6.23 million were moderately to severely vision-impaired because of it, according to findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study’s vision loss expert group, published last July. The prevalence of DME among diabetics was estimated to be 5.47 per cent globally, based on seven studies that evaluated 58,592 patients, according to a 2022 University of Toronto study. The number of people living with diabetes quadrupled to 830 million in 2022 from 1990, the World Health Organization estimated in November.
Eric Ng
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Eric joined the Post in 1998 after brief stints in a trading company, and translation and editing roles at Dow Jones and Edinburgh Financial Publishing. He has over 20 years of experience covering China’s energy, mining and industrial materials sectors, and has reported on China’s healthcare and biotechnology sectors for three years. Currently, he leads the Post’s coverage on climate change, energy transition and sustainability topics. Eric has a Masters of Business
