We focus this month on Oyster Point, a biopharmaceutical company, and recently had the pleasure to hear from Jeff Nau, PhD, MMS, Oyster Point’s CEO and president.

JEFF NAU, PHD, MMSCEO, PRESIDENT, OYSTER POINT

Dr. Nau, please tell us about Oyster Point in terms of its history and direction.

Oyster Point started with me as the first full-time employee in my home office in 2017, along with a number of consultants who helped me to start the company.

We were able to move quickly: if you can imagine starting a company at zero in 2017 and having a product that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2021.

Today, we have 300-plus employees. We have more than 150 people in the field in our sales force. We are launching our first product, Tyrvaya, the first and only nasal spray in the market to treat the signs and symptoms of dry eye disease.

Tell us about any new developments in which Oyster Point is involved.

We have what we’ve coined as Enriched Tear Film Gene Therapy, which is delivering adeno-associated viral vectors to the lacrimal gland. We can, with a single injection, deliver a vector into the lacrimal gland, and then the lacrimal gland will start to produce whatever that target is.

The first one that we have gone into animal studies with great success is a vector that codes for human nerve growth factor. It can be administered with a single injection into the lacrimal gland. Within seven days, that person’s producing his or her own nerve growth factor and secreting it into the tear film. We’re able to measure very large amounts of growth factor in the tear film.

We can modulate the dose by how much of the virus we put into the lacrimal gland. Once it’s there, we can use varenicline solution nasal spray to stimulate the pathway to secrete the protein in the tear film onto the ocular surface. It’s a combination of pharmacology and gene therapy, in which the lacrimal gland is used as the drug delivery mechanism.

In the future, we would be able to look at a person’s tear film and almost figure out what they’re missing, then be able to supplement by having the lacrimal gland produce that.

Tell us your vision for the dry eye field in the short term (less than five years) and in the long term (20 years from now).

As we look forward to treating dry eye, it’s no longer going to be a single drop that has an anti-inflammatory or a steroid; we’re going to get more sophisticated with biologic therapy and uncovering the root cause. The more that we can understand the driving force behind many of these ocular surface diseases, the better we’re going to be able to develop therapy.

Two things need to change. One, we need to understand the underlying causes of the disease, because we’ve been focused so much on inflammation, and that’s part of it, but it’s certainly not the holy grail. Next, what is the biotechnology that we can bring to bear that is successful in some other part of medicine?

With the contact lens part of it, there’s been some nice innovations going on in the vision science side. Many of the devices, whether they be contact lenses or intraocular lenses—they’re all going to get better over time. You’re already seeing sort of the meshing of pharma and contact lenses. The beginning is here.

For us, the exciting part of Tyrvaya is that we look at it as one of the tools in the toolbox. It’s using the patient’s own natural tear film, and with our gene therapy platform, we can leverage those glands to be the therapeutic option for the ocular surface.

We’re partnering with researchers to conduct investigator-initiated trials in the contact lens space, and we’re excited as to how stimulation of the natural tear film may not only improve lens comfort and promote extended wear, but maybe eventually play a role in the way that the drug eluting contact lenses will work by stimulating the natural tear film. We think stimulation of the natural tear film is a foundation therapy; other treatment approaches can work in combination with the product. CLS