ASCRS 2023: Aurion clinical trials of endothelial cell therapy injection

John Berdahl, MD, discussed the Aurion clinical trials of endothelial cell therapy injection at the 2023 ASCRS annual meeting in San Diego.

Video transcript

Editor’s note: Transcript lightly edited for clarity.

John Berdahl, MD:

Hi, I'm John Berdahl here at ASCRS 2023. I'm a partner of Vance Thompson Vision and one of the investigators in the Aurion clinical trials of endothelial cell therapy injection.

I am an investigator and a consultant for them. So Aurion has now completed three clinical trials. The first one was done by Dr. Kinoshita in Japan, where this pioneering therapy was invented and then published in the New England Journal of Medicine and ultimately has a PMDA approval in Japan.

There have been two additional studies done in Central America that I was lucky to participate in alongside of colleagues Ed Holland, Liz Yeu, and Matt Giegengack. We went down to El Salvador, and we wiped off the endothelial cells, and we injected new cultured endothelial cells. And these were very sick eyes and the results were really remarkable. The average vision prior to injection was 22/100. When you take the average of all three studies, and that improved to 20/40. In really sick eyes, the average corneal thickness was about 700 microns. And that improved to about 550 microns on average across the three studies.

The safety thus far has been remarkable, and we're doing ongoing safety monitoring. And soon we'll be starting clinical trials here in the United States. So as I think about the technologies that are coming that could change how we treat our patients with corneal disease. This is at the forefront and I'm really excited to be able to participate in it.