Irvine eye device startup AcuFocus Inc. may be working to fight fuzzy vision, but its own future looks pretty clear.
AcuFocus just got an undisclosed investment from Bausch & Lomb Inc., the Rochester, N.Y.-based eye products company. Bausch & Lomb has an option to buy AcuFocus.
“It’s excellent for our industry that a large company has stepped forward so early in the process,” said Ed Peterson, AcuFocus’ chief executive.
Bausch & Lomb sees “the potential of the product,” Peterson said. “They understand this particular space very well and they chose to approach us early and with a sizable investment that gives them (an exclusive) opportunity to acquire us at a set point in time.”
AcuFocus is using the investment to kick up and broaden its efforts to bring its technology to eye surgeons. Before the Bausch & Lomb investment, AcuFocus had raised more than $37 million in funding.
The company’s working on a replacement lens that’s implanted in the cornea to treat presbyopia, a condition that affects nearly everyone over the age of 40 and requires glasses for reading.
AcuFocus started clinical trials for its lens last year. Trials are expected to last three years.
“Our product is the only surgical enhancer that’s currently in an active FDA trial in Europe and the U.S. that delivers near vision, intermediate vision and distance vision,” Peterson said.
Venture capitalists love AcuFocus. In 2005, it received a $27 million round of funding led by Versant Ventures, a firm that has an office in Newport Beach and ties to other Orange County medical device makers.
William Link, a Versant managing director, is AcuFocus’ chairman.
AcuFocus’ “whole idea had merit from kind of an optical standpoint, and that whole market is so interesting because it’s presbyopia,” Link said. “For any of us who are over 45 or 50, we realize we need help in reading and seeing intermediate.
“We liked the idea that we have implantation of a tiny inlay that would create a ‘pinhole effect’ and increase depth of focus,” Link said.
The pinhole effect was “extremely well-known in the optical industry,the way a camera increases its depth of focus by tightening the diaphragm,” he said.
There’s also the possibility of using AcuFocus’ lens with Lasik vision correction surgery, which intrigued him as well, he said.
As for Peterson, his background includes a stint at Alcon Inc., a unit of Nestl & #233; SA that has more than 600 workers in Irvine. He was with the eye surgery unit of what was then Palo Alto-based Cooper Cos., which now is Lake Forest-based contact lens maker Cooper Cos.
Washington, D.C.-based private equity investor Carlyle Group LLC and Accuitive Medical Ventures LLC, an Atlanta venture capital firm, are other investors in AcuFocus.
The company was founded in 2001 and grew out of a suburban Atlanta business incubator called Innovation Factory LLC. Thomas Weldon and Charles Larsen, who also cofounded medical device maker Novoste Corp., started Innovation Factory in 1999.
“Versant has a longtime relationship with the Innovation Factory guys, and as you might expect, when they find an ophthalmic opportunity, they often talk with me and with Versant to help understand it,” Link said.
Peterson, in fact, was vice president of business development at Innovation Factory when AcuFocus was established.
AcuFocus, which has 20 workers, moved to the county in 2004.
“We moved to Orange County because it was apparent that we had a unique technology and, with the appropriate skill set, we might have a chance of becoming a product,” Peterson said.
Being close to the county’s pool of clinical professionals, engineers, regulatory and research and development consultants, as well as Versant, were part of the company’s choice to move here.
AcuFocus’ lens is still some time away from coming to market. Peterson estimates it’s three years away from Food and Drug Administration approval.
Although AcuFocus has European clearance, it’s not available there, Peterson said.
“Strategically, we don’t believe that it’s a good idea to start selling products with such a great distance away from U.S. approval,” he said. “You lose absolute control of your entire quality process when you just start selling your product.”
AcuFocus isn’t the only OC device company that’s aiming for the presbyopia market.
Visiogen Inc., which also is in Irvine, is developing its own lens for treating presbyopia, as is Lake Forest-based ReVision Optics Inc.
