Lake Forest-based ReVision Optics Inc. nabbed another round of funding.
The company, which is targeting the eye’s inability to focus up close with age, raised $25 million in a fourth investment round.
ReVision’s raised a total of $37 million in venture funding, said Chief Executive J. Randy Alexander.
Domain Associates LLC, a venture capital firm with offices in Princeton, N.J., and San Diego, led the most recent round. Two prior investors, Canaan Partners and InterWest Partners, which both have offices in Menlo Park, also took part.
ReVision plans to use the money for several purposes, including for clinical trials.
The company’s lead product, PresbyLens, is a corrective replacement lens for presbyopia, the loss of the eye’s natural flexibility to focus. It affects some 73 million Americans, almost all of them age 40 and older who require reading glasses.
“Presbyopia is considered by those of us in ophthalmology to be an unmet need, a huge market,” Alexander said. “We’re attempting to eliminate the need for reading glasses.”
The company’s set to soon file a request for an investigational device exemption with the Food and Drug Administration in the third quarter.
“(The exemption) allows us to do our clinical trials in the U.S.,” Alexander said.
Also part of the funding deal: Brian Dovey, a Domain Associates LLC partner based in Princeton, joined ReVision’s board.
PresbyLens “is an important development in the fast-growing ophthalmology space and one of the few focused on treating the loss of near vision in a minimally invasive fashion,” Dovey said in a statement.
“I know Brian very well. I’ve been in several companies with him,” Alexander said. “Traditionally, what I do when I’m ready for a financing, I would approach several VCs (that) I know or my board knows. I approach them based on our past relationship.”
ReVision plans to have PresbyLens available for sale in late 2010 or 2011. Alexander expects to raise more money prior to PresbyLens’ launch. The company also could go public or look to be acquired, he said.
IntraLase Tie
ReVision formerly was known as IntraLens Vision Inc. It changed its name in late 2005 as part of a strategic shift.
At that time, ReVision said it was going to target the refractive surgery market with an emphasis on correcting presbyopia and maintaining vision through intracorneal implant lenses. It had started research work with IntraLase Corp., the Irvine eye surgery device maker that was recently bought by Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics Inc. for $808 million.
IntraLase acquired full rights to the IntraLens name at the time. Alexander was a former IntraLase chief executive. Dovey’s firm, Domain, was an IntraLase investor.
IntraLase’s software helps a femtosecond laser make a corneal incision which PresbyLens is implanted in, Alexander said.
ReVision now counts 20 workers. It plans to hire five more by the end of this year.
The company’s not the only Orange County device maker that’s aiming for the presbyopia market. Irvine-based AcuFocus Inc. received an undisclosed investment in February from Bausch & Lomb Inc., a Rochester, N.Y.-based eye products company.
Two other local companies are looking to tap the late stages of presbyopia. Aliso Viejo-based Eyeonics Inc. is making replacement eye lenses for cataract patients. Irvine-based Visiogen Inc. is making Synchrony, an intraocular lens used in cataract surgery.
There’s room for many companies chasing presbyopia because players are going after different segments of the market, Alexander said.
ReVision is targeting “early presbyopes,” patients who have just developed the condition. Such patients may receive their PresbyLens implants as part of refractive eye surgery, he said.
