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Bengaluru-based clinical-stage biotech firm Eyestem Research has raised $10 million in a Series B round, co-led by Raju Barwale and Sandeep Singh, Managing Director of Alkem Laboratories.

The new capital will be invested to finalize the company's current Phase 2 clinical trial in India and towards planning for the submission of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Established in 2015 by Jogin Desai, Rajani Battu, and Rajarshi Pal, Eyestem is a company that is engaged in cell replacement therapies for untreatable eye disorders, with an emphasis on dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

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Its lead therapy, Eyecyte-RPE, utilizes retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells that are derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells to restore damaged retinal cells. Formulated for GA patients a late stage of dry AMD Eyecyte-RPE is allogeneic, scalable, and can be stored frozen in vials for years.

The company has already filed its Phase 1 clinical trial report with the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) and is waiting for approval to begin Phase 2 trials. Eyestem hopes Eyecyte-RPE may be able to facilitate tissue regeneration in diseased retinas, bringing hope to millions globally suffering from progressive vision loss.

Dry AMD is one of the major causes of blindness in people above 50, and it affects approximately 196 million people worldwide, of whom about five million have GA. The major players operating in the space are Lineage Cell Therapeutics and Voyager Therapeutics.