Glaucoma therapy spinout Quethera will become a unit of drug manufacturer Astellas Pharma, providing exits to investors Cambridge Enterprise, UCEF III and UK2IS.

Quethera, a UK-based glaucoma therapy developer spun out from University of Cambridge, has been acquired by pharmaceutical firm Astellas Pharma for up to £85m ($108m) in cash and contingent commitments.

Founded in 2013, Quethera is creating drugs for treating glaucoma which use recombinant adeno-associated viral vectors (rAAV) to implant therapeutic genes in retinal cells.

Glaucoma is an ocular disease leading to blindness over the long-term, caused when the optic nerve has been damaged by pressure from built-up fluids.

Quethera believes rAAV is a particularly effective form of viral vector, tools which bring genetic material into cells by exploiting similar mechanisms to viruses.

During pre-clinical trials, Quethera’s lead drug candidate was proven to protect retinal ganglion cells, a group of neurons near the inner retina surface integral to receiving visual information.

Quethera was co-founded by chief executive Peter Widdowson and Keith Martin, a professor in Cambridge’s Department of Clinical Neurosciences. It will become a wholly-owned Astellas subsidiary.

Quethera received an undisclosed seed sum in 2015 from university tech transfer office Cambridge Enterprise and government-backed VC vehicle UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), which was then called Rainbow Seed Fund. 

Fund management firm Parkwalk Advisors, now part of IP Group, also backed the 2015 round through University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund III, established to drive investment in Cambridge spinouts.

UKI2S subsequently returned to provide follow-on funding, though further details have not been disclosed.

Kenji Yasukawa, president and CEO of Astellas, said: “This acquisition demonstrates Astellas’s commitment to proactively incorporate state-of-the-art scientific and technological advances and turn them into value for patients.”

“We believe the rAAV program has potential as a new therapeutic option for the treatment of refractory glaucoma through an intraocular pressure-independent mechanism. It would address a high unmet medical need in glaucoma patients who are at risk of losing their eyesight.”