‘Our APIOC™ Brand is a Patented, First-of-its-Kind Line of Soft, Suspended Contact Lens Designed to Deliver Exceptional, Glasses-Like Vision at All Distances’: Robin G. Sears, CEO of Lentechs

“Our innovative APIOC product line began with a core technology that Lentechs licensed from The Ohio State Innovation Foundation in 2017. Since that time, we have proudly designed APIOC with support and partnership from a coalition of leading optometric and ophthalmic practitioners.”

Lentechs is a privately held, clinical-stage, ophthalmic medical device company dedicated to improving vision at every stage of life through innovative design and breakthrough contact lens technologies. The company is focused on developing a patented, first-of-its-kind line of soft, suspended contact lens designed to deliver exceptional, glasses-like vision at all distances.

Founded in 2017, Lentechs is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. Robin G. Sears, CEO of Lentechs, spoke to The Silicon Review about how the Company’s new generation of soft, suspended contact lens, APIOC™, will help solve the current visual challenges in the contact lens market for people with presbyopia. Below is an excerpt.

Lentechs | Synopsis

Innovating Contact Lens Design and Optics

The ‘Big 4’ contact lens manufacturers continue to focus innovation primarily on polymer chemistry—for decades now—in efforts to improve patient comfort. While this work has certainly been valuable, it has not addressed some core challenges patients face as they age from a vision standpoint. In fact, contact lens usage drops from nearly 50 percent of vision corrected patients wearing contact lenses in their 20s to less than five percent of patients by the time they reach 60. Yet patients would prefer to wear contact lenses.

This is a challenging opportunity that leads many companies to pursue pharmaceutical or surgical solutions for presbyopia vs. finding a soft contact lens option that works for all.

For people living with presbyopia and presbyopia with astigmatism, there are common frustrations with current contact lens choices:

• Many patients would like to do away with their corrective spectacles or ‘readers’ altogether for greater freedom in daily life.
• Multifocal contact lenses create some compromised vision because the mechanism of action (MOA) of the lens’ visual correction degrades some portion of a patient’s vision. For example, patients may experience exceptional near vision while wearing their multifocal lens yet have diminished distance or mid-range vision.

To help solve these challenges, Lentechs is developing a soft, suspended contact lens for the millions of underserved people with presbyopia and presbyopia with astigmatism. The company’s contact lens enables the eye to move freely behind it (up and down) as it would behind a pair of progressive addition glasses, enabling users to access specific prescription zones needed for each visual distance correction.

“We aim to deliver a breakthrough, innovative contact lens design for an industry that has lacked design innovation and focuses mostly on innovating contact lens materials. Our APIOC™ brand is a patented, first-of-its-kind line of soft, suspended contact lens designed to deliver exceptional, glasses-like vision at all distances.”

APIOC™: Unique Mechanism of Action

The APIOC design is completely different from current soft, multifocal contact lenses. The current products in the market offer simultaneous vision correction which can cause visual compromise; making lenses more challenging to adapt to for some patients. With a slightly more relaxed fit than traditional lenses, APIOC’s breakthrough design consists of a unique front surface feature, which suspends the lens behind the upper eyelid, two balance zones, an optical zone, and a proprietary back surface.

APIOC^TM was designed especially with the presbyopia patient in mind. “Our lens is first and foremost, designed to utilize the eye’s anatomy rather than conform to it. Unlike traditional contact lenses, our APIOC lens is suspended behind the upper eyelid, allowing for free, translational (up and down) eye movement behind the rotationally stable, centered contact lens. By allowing the eye to freely move behind the APIOC lens, wearers can access the specific prescription needed for each visual distance correction.”

“Our innovative APIOC line began with a core technology that Lentechs licensed from The Ohio State Innovation Foundation in 2017. Since that time, we have proudly designed APIOC with support and partnership from a coalition of leading optometric and ophthalmic practitioners. We have taken a measured, stepwise approach to develop this innovation, with careful input and testing at each stage of its design.”

Why APIOC^TM Will Succeed

Given the large divide between patients with presbyopia who would prefer to wear a contact lens and those who actually do, the company’s plan is to transform and grow the contact lens market by offering a product that delivers first and foremost on vision. Therefore, consumers who want to wear contact lenses will no longer have to compromise.

“In developing the APIOC line of contact lenses, we have done extensive market research with both presbyopia patients, and eye care professionals (ECPs) who prescribe contact lenses. Our research showed: a) Among optometrists (ODs), less than 15 percent of presbyopia patients are being prescribed a contact lens option, even though nearly 70 percent of these patients would prefer a contact lens option. b) More than 80 percent of the ODs-surveyed say it is challenging to find a suitable contact lens that works for presbyopes. c) When presented with the case study for APIOC, nearly 90 percent of ODs said they would be very or extremely likely to prescribe the new lens design. d) Nearly 70 percent of glasses wearers and 90 percent of current contacts lens wearers are interested in APIOC.”

In November of 2021, Lentechs announced preliminary results in its milestone clinical trial evaluating its investigational contact lens for patients with presbyopia. Building on its robust R&D program, analysis from the seven-day visual acuity primary endpoint showed that patients wearing APIOC experienced improved distance vision vs. their successful, habitual, multifocal contact lenses, or vision comparable to their habitual prescription glasses. Specifically, the analysis showed:

• Patients reported clinically meaningful, statistically significant improvement in high-and low-contrast distance vision with APIOC over their habitual multifocal contact lenses while maintaining vision up close and in-between.
• Patients reported comparable vision at distance, intermediate, and near with APIOC and their habitual prescription glasses.
• Comfort was effectively (or widely) comparable to patients’ habitual multifocal contact lenses.

Roadmap for the Future

Lentechs is focused on the 120 million US patients and two billion worldwide living with presbyopia and astigmatism. Presbyopia is an age-related condition where the interior, crystalline lens of the eye gradually thickens and loses its flexibility. This makes it more challenging to focus on the near and intermediate ranges, and is largely unavoidable; everyone gets it. With that mind, population growth makes this an attractive market for decades in the future. Given the disconnect between current contact lens wearers and those that want to wear them, there is a ton of opportunity for explosive category growth, especially given the promise provided by APIOC’s strong clinical data.

Lentechs plans to eventually offer a platform that addresses each patient’s unique vision requirements throughout their lifetime. APIOC products initially offered will be APIOC for presbyopia and APIOC for presbyopia with astigmatism. The future APIOC platform will also include single vision contact lens solutions.

“Our goal is to deliver optimal vision at all distances throughout a patient’s lifetime.”

Robin G. Sears | President & CEO

Robin G. Sears, MBA, has been at the forefront of life science commercial strategy for pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and medically related consumer package goods for over 30 years. He is a recognized commercial leader with longstanding tenures at Johnson and Johnson, Allergan, and Abbott. He is a member of the Buckeye Executive Network for the Ohio State University Technology Commercialization Office and is the CEO of multiple startup companies, all in the eyecare space.

Robin holds a BA from Wittenberg University and an MBA from the University of Vermont.

“We aim to deliver a breakthrough, innovative contact lens design for an industry that has lacked design innovation and focuses mostly on innovating contact lens materials.”