OKYO Pharma Ltd

OKYO Pharma Ltd is a clinical-stage ophthalmology company dedicated to developing distinct treatments for diseases affecting the cornea and the front part of the eye. The company aims to meet significant unmet medical needs in these areas through innovative science, focused therapeutic strategies, and a structured clinical and regulatory development approach. With extensive expertise in ophthalmology, covering research, clinical development, regulatory affairs, and commercialization, OKYO Pharma Ltd is advancing a pipeline of products designed to improve outcomes for patients with debilitating eye diseases that affect vision, eye comfort, and overall quality of life. The company's primary program, urcosimod, is being developed as a potential first-in-class treatment for neuropathic corneal pain, a severe condition for which there are currently no FDA-approved therapies. OKYO Pharma Ltd's research program centers on a novel G Protein-Coupled Receptor (GPCR), which is believed to be crucial in the pathology of specific ocular eye diseases with high unmet medical needs. The therapeutic approach involves targeting a specific GPCR receptor called CMKLR1 (or ChemR23), which is involved in the inflammatory and pain modulation pathways that drive these conditions. Urcosimod (formerly OK-101), the company's lead clinical product candidate, is a lipidated chemerin peptide designed to specifically bind to ChemR23 and block its role in causing ocular pain and inflammation. On February 21, 2018, OKYO Pharma Ltd successfully obtained a license from On Target Therapeutics (OTT) for patents owned or controlled by OTT, and a sub-license from OTT for certain patents licensed by OTT from Tufts Medical Center (TMC). These licenses, assigned from Biovitas Limited, a related party, support the company's ophthalmic disease drug programs and provide the right to exploit the intellectual property covering urcosimod (formerly OK-101), which relates to compositions-of-matter and methodologies for treating ocular pain and inflammation using lipid-linked chemerin analogues like urcosimod.