SEATTLE, WA — Light Sciences, which is commercializing proprietary technology for photodynamic therapy (PDT), plans to spin off three focused subsidiaries to develop and market light-activated treatments using the company’s proprietary light-infusion technology. The goal is to target therapeutic innovations in cancer, ophthalmic, and cardiovascular diseases. The new companies are Light Sciences Oncology, Visient Therapeutics, and Vascular Reconditioning.
“This structure will allow us to operate more efficiently, and permit venture firms to invest in the therapeutic area that they find most compelling,” said Albert Luderer, president and CEO of Light Sciences. “The individual companies will have exclusive access to Light Sciences’ intellectual property within their disease category and will individually seek venture funding. Each company will become fully independent businesses focused on exploiting Litx in markets with great medical need and huge business potential.”
Litx is a next-generation photodynamic therapy platform in which the photoreactive drug, LS11 (talaporfin sodium), is activated by noncoherent light to treat abnormally proliferating tissues. Light Sciences Oncology and Visient Therapeutics are currently conducting multinational clinical trials of Litx in cancer and eye disease. Light Sciences Oncology is testing Litx in a multi-center clinical trial treating patients with liver metastases arising from colorectal cancer; Visient Therapeutics is recruiting patients into a clinical trial of LS11 in patients with the wet form of age-related macular degeneration. Vascular Reconditioning is developing a new coronary atherosclerosis treatment for interventional cardiologists to use against vulnerable plaque, the underlying cause of heart attacks.