“There is an unmet medical need for new effective treatments with a beneficial safety and tolerability profile to be used in inflammatory eye disorders such as non-infectious uveitis, a sight-threatening eye disease. The preliminary results of this study are encouraging, with no safety concerns or local toxicity issues with the laquinimod eye drop at the dosing regimens tested,” said Dr Gerhard Garhöfer, Principal Investigator for the study in Vienna, Austria.

Laquinimod is being developed as a new treatment for inflammatory eye disorders, and preclinical data suggest that laquinimod may have a therapeutic effect when given as a capsule or as a topical treatment onto the eye. Active Biotech has developed an eye drop formulation of laquinimod with the aim to use it for treatment initially in patients with non-infectious uveitis.

“Preclinical data has shown that laquinimod has the potential to be used as a treatment option in severe inflammatory eye diseases. With the safety profile established the next step will be to start a clinical study with laquinimod in patients” said Erik Vahtola, CMO of Active Biotech.

The study was a randomized, double-masked, placebo-controlled phase I study to determine the safety and tolerability and establish a safe and tolerable dose for continued development of laquinimod eye drops after single and repeated dosing in healthy subjects. Secondary aims included the assessment of ocular toxicity and pharmacokinetics of laquinimod.

The complete data set from the study is currently being analyzed, and the full study results will be reported in H1 2023.

For more information about the study, see www.clinicaltrials.gov ref. NCT05187403