Eyestem Files for IND Approval for Its Product to Treat Geographic Atrophy, the Largest Cause of Incurable Blindness in the World for People Over 50

Dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD) is the largest cause of incurable blindness in the world for patients over 50 years. 170 million people suffer from this disease around the world, 25 million of which are in India. These numbers will unfortunately increase in the coming decades as our population ages. The more severe version of dry AMD is geographic atrophy,and no therapy is available to arrest or reverse this loss of vision.

(L to R) Dr Jogin Desai, Dr Rajani Battu & Dr Rajarshi Pal

Eyestem Research today announced the submission of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the Central Drugs Standards Control Organization, India (CDSCO) to begin first in-human trials of Eyecyte-RPE™for subjects with medium- and late-stage geographic atrophy, secondary to dry AMD.

Dr. Rajani Battu, Chief Medical Officer, Eyestem Research, said, “We are excited to start human trials for Eyecyte-RPE™. Dry AMD is a huge disease burden, and this therapy has the potential to make a meaningful difference in our patients’ lives.”

Dr. Jogin Desai, Chief Executive Officer, Eyestem Research, said, “Most cell and gene therapy products under development in the West are estimated to cost over US$ 200,000.Our vision is to democratize access to such treatments at a fraction of these costs and begin disruption of the current status quo with our Eyecyte-RPE™ product.”

Eyestem Research is a deep science company incubated at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms, Bangalore, and supported by DBT-BIRAC as well as prestigious Indian and global healthcare investors. The IND submission for Eyecyte-RPE™is supported by robust GLP toxicology data from Dabur Research Foundation in India and excellent efficacy/safety data in animal models at Oregon Health and Science University. Validation of the injection technique and dose-finding studies were done in advanced animal models at the Singapore Eye Research Institute.

About Eyecyte-RPE™

Eyecyte-RPE™ is a patented suspension of iPSC-derived fate-committed retinal pigment epithelium cells, which are highly potent, safe, and efficacious in in-vitro and in-vivo studies. The cells are derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, are allogeneic in nature, and can be stored for long periods of time.

About Eyestem Research

Headquartered in Bangalore and Delaware, Eyestem Research is a clinical-stage biotechnology company, which was started by a founding team with several decades of experience in pharmaceutical product development, ophthalmology, and cell biology. It has won significant accolades with the most recent one being named the top innovator in the country across all sectors in 2022 by the prestigious The Economic Times newspaper. It is also the recipient of several prestigious grants from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and has been feted at high-profile government functions as one of the most successful startups in the country. In addition to being backed by global investors in Switzerland and South Africa, it is backed by two of the most prestigious venture capital firms in the country – Kotak Investment Advisors and Endiya Partners. Its most recent fundraise was backed by a consortium of three multi-billion dollar Indian pharmaceutical companies –Alkem Laboratories, NATCO, and Biological E.

STEM Curriculum Introduced to the Visually Impaired Students in Govt Schools of Karnataka

Teachers from multiple government schools are getting trained by Vision Empower and Sankara Eye Foundation to teach STEM curriculum to visually impaired students.

Curriculum introduced by Vision Empower in collaboration with Microsoft India, Sankara Eye Hospital, CII – Young Indians

To make education more accessible to the visually impaired students in government special schools, Vision Empower in collaboration with Sankara Eye Hospital have introduced STEM education across 5 districts in Karnataka. Vision Empower is a Not-for-profit Organisation incubated at IIIT Bangalore.

The curriculum is introduced to 64 schools that includes both government and government-aided special schools across Kolar, Doddaballapura, Devanahalli, Nelamangala & Hoskote.

Speaking on the initiative, Vidhya Y, Co-founder & Trustee of Vision Empower said,“Children with special needs particularly from the rural areas often do not have access to an inclusive education. Our goal is to make STEM approachable to the visually impaired students. We create STEM content for students in the form of Braille books, audio books, and tactile diagrams for students at all grades. By introducing them to the government schools in rural areas of Karnataka we aim to empower the visually impaired students. We are glad to collaborate with Sankara Eye Hospital for this initiative.”

“We are delighted to be part of this unique initiative by Vision Empower and to introduce STEM Education to the visually impaired students in the government special schools of Karnataka for the economically weaker sections. Learning curriculum through customised content for the visually impaired students ensures STEM learning is fun and an enriching experience at the same time. We hope this initiative will make learning more interactive and engaging for the students enabling a colourful future to the visually impaired students”, said Dr. Kaushik Murali- President Medical Administration, Quality And Education, Sankara Eye Foundation India.

Vision Empower and Sankara Eye Hospital, Bangalore aims to implement STEM curriculum with specially designed content for visually impaired students across all government special schools in Karnataka by the next academic year.

About Sankara Eye Hospital, Bangalore

Sankara Eye Hospital, Bengaluru an NABH accredited tertiary hospital is a unit of Sankara Eye Foundation. The hospital was established in 2008 with a vision to provide highest quality and value for money in eye care services. It is a centre of excellence in ophthalmology. The Department of Vision Rehabilitation at the Hospital provides comprehensive vision rehabilitation services –early intervention, training in activities in daily living, educational guidance, environmental modifications, training in use of low vision devices, training in use of assistive software, vocation guidance, guiding in getting supportive benefits from the government, library for the visually impaired with braille, large print and audio books. Sankara Eye Foundation has its presence across India and is synonymous for World Class Eye Care with a Social Impact.

Daffodil Software Uses AI to Empower the Visually Impaired in RBI MANI app

The Reserve Bank of India Governor, Shaktikanta Das, launched the Mobile Aided Note Identifier (MANI) app on January 1, 2020, to aid the visually impaired in identifying the denomination of Indian banknotes. The app is stated to be technological progression to various ways that enable the visually impaired Indians (color blind, partially sighted, or blind people) to identify and distinguish between the banknotes.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 20% of the world's visually impaired population is in India. This is one of the significant reasons for RBI to empower nearly 8 million Indian citizens with an app that can help them to identify currency denomination and distinguish between them.

In this initiative by the Reserve Bank of India, Daffodil Software has been their technology partner who translated their vision into a mobile app. A leading software engineering company, based in Gurgaon, Daffodil software reveals that Artificial Intelligence is the underlying technology that allows the users to identify banknotes denomination.

One of the major challenges in achieving maximum accuracy was to identify the notes in different light conditions, from various holding angles. To sort this challenge, Machine Learning (ML) with Image Classification was identified as the most relevant technology for building the app. Machine Learning is an application of Artificial Intelligence that makes a system to learn and improve from past experiences.

For currency note identification, team Daffodil created a set of 1,50,000 images of old and new banknotes in the denomination of Rs 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 2,000 that are in circulation today. Whenever a user scans a note, the app compares the scanned image of the note with 1,50,000 images in the data set. Image Classification technology, on the other hand, classifies the images according to its visual content and notifies the users.

One of the key requirements of the app was to make it work in offline mode to enable users to identify currency denominations in areas with poor internet connectivity. This functionality of the app posed challenges to the data set in self-training, i.e. as users scan more images in the app, the data set does not grow larger. Therefore, it was important for team Daffodil to intensively train the data set to give results with maximum accuracy.

Regarding the success of the MANI app, Yogesh Agarwal (CEO, Daffodil Software) says: "Daffodil Software is an early adopter of Artificial Intelligence technology which puts it into the leadership position to build an app like MANI. Being a government of India initiative, this was a key project for us as it was going to empower 8 million visually impaired people across India.

For people with hearing and visual impairments, the app has predefined vibrations for different denominations of banknotes. For its technical and functional advances, the app has received an applaudable response from the users with 3,50,000+ downloads in the timespan of just one month."

About Daffodil Software

[caption id="attachment_142062" align="alignleft" width="237"] Daffodil Software[/caption]

For more than 20 years, Daffodil Software has been a trusted software technology partner to organizations across the globe. With our roots into innovation, tech agility, & time-proven processes, our team of 600+ technologists strives to shape the tech industry and help businesses elevate their value proposition through technology. For more information, visit https://www.daffodilsw.com

Netflix, Bloomberg, ServiceNow, Google, and Tesla has the Happiest Employees - Survey

Employees who felt they had significant growth (79% happy) in their organization were much happier than the employees who thought they had only moderate growth (57% happy), And of course, employees who responded that they had no growth (16% happy) were very unhappy.

From December 9th to 31st 2019, Blind, a community where more than 3.2 million verified professionals communicate anonymously online, surveyed a total of 10,129 users and asked the following questions:

Q1. In 2019, how much growth do you think you had while working at your organization?

• Significant Growth


• Moderate Growth


• No Growth

Q2. Are you happy at your current workplace?

• Yes


• No

Blind received survey responses from a total of 10,129 users. In order to rank companies, Blind gave each company a personal growth score by giving more weight to “significant growth” over “moderate growth” and for “no growth,” a score of 0.

Key Takeaways

• Bloomberg, JUUL, Cruise Automation, Facebook, and Spotify ranked top 5 on our list, where employees thought they had the most growth in 2019 — followed by Wayfair, Google, Lyft, Walmart, and Uber.


• Not surprisingly, employees who felt they had significant growth (79% happy) in their organization were much happier than the employees who thought they had only moderate growth (57% happy), And of course, employees who responded that they had no growth (16% happy) were very unhappy.

Companies with the Happiest Employees: % of employees that responded happy

Company	Happy
Netflix	85.71%
Bloomberg	74.07%
ServiceNow	71.43%
Google	66.88%
Tesla Motors	65.00%
PayPal	64.00%
Pinterest	63.64%
Facebook	63.25%
Lyft	61.54%
LinkedIn	60.87%
Spotify	59.09%
T-Mobile	57.14%
VMware	55.56%
Indeed.com	55.00%
Cisco	54.55%

 

Companies with the Least Happy Employees: % of employees that responded not happy

Company	Not Happy
Nutanix	76.00%
WeWork	70.45%
JPMorgan Chase & Co.	69.23%
Symantec	68.18%
Visa	66.67%
Qualcomm	66.67%
Intuit	65.79%
Oracle	63.75%
Grab	63.33%
eBay	63.16%
NVIDIA	61.76%
IBM	59.52%
Expedia Group	59.22%
Splunk	59.09%
Twitter	55.56%