This month, we highlight Nevakar, a company focused on developing pharmaceuticals for the ophthalmic and hospital segments. I recently had the pleasure to speak with Nevakar Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Navneet Puri, PhD.

NAVNEET PURI, PHD
FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN, AND CEO, NEVAKAR

Dr. Puri, please tell us about your company in terms of its history and direction.

Nevakar is a relatively young company formed over five years ago on the premise of improving patients’ quality of life and healthcare outcomes. All of our products are centered around one or both of these themes and cater to the needs of patients and healthcare systems in the hospital and ophthalmic segments. We have a team of 77, almost half of whom are scientists, based in Bridgewater, NJ. Today, we have 13 products under development, with three New Drug Applications (NDAs) filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the first of which was recently approved.

Specific to eye care, Nevakar strives to preserve and improve the vision of patients by correcting and treating refractive errors. This approach is based on pharmacological interventions versus the current standard of care that utilizes corrective surgery or lenses and glasses, and we believe that the availability of pharmaceutical treatment will be a very significant paradigm shift.

Tell us about any new developments in which Nevakar is involved.

Nevakar’s lead ophthalmic product is NVK-002, a novel, preservative-free, low-dose topical formulation of atropine. It is currently in Phase 3 clinical development in the United States and in Europe as part of our fully enrolled CHAMP (Childhood Atropine for Myopia Progression) study. If approved, NVK-002 will be the first pharmaceutical treatment indicated to slow the progression of myopia in children; this makes it a very exciting product, not just for us at Nevakar but for millions of prescribers as well as children and their parents. As we know, myopia prevalence is on a very steep trajectory globally. So treating myopia is not just a convenience factor but a must, especially for high myopes who can face significant complications in later years if myopia is not treated in the early years.

In planning for global availability of NVK-002, we recently signed two commercial licensing agreements—one with Hong Kong-based Zhaoke, for China and southeast Asia, and the other with Théa in Europe. We’ll continue to explore global partnerships to assure accessibility of our product worldwide.

We are also working on developing products for other indications outside of refractive errors in the cornea and anterior chamber. We look forward to discussing these early stage products in the future as their clinical development progresses.

Tell us your vision for the myopia management field in the short term (less than 5 years) and in the long term (20 years from now).

Within the next five years, we envision the availability of pharmaceutical treatment for patients who have myopia, either as a standalone option or as part of multimodal therapy in conjunction with other options such as corrective glasses and lenses. This will be life-changing for millions of patients, and we are excited to be a part of this evolution.

In about 20 years or so, we envision every patient suffering from any kind of refractive error to have a pharmaceutical treatment available to them as an option—and we envision that Nevakar will lead this evolution and paradigm shift. Also in the long term, we envision Nevakar addressing various other unmet needs in the anterior chamber by leveraging the principle of drug repositioning. This approach has the potential to provide solutions in a shorter period of time with relatively lower investment, which will make the resulting products more affordable and accessible by the masses on a global basis. CLS