InnoTherapy "Efficacy of Self-Sealing Injection Needles for Ophthalmology... Published in Scientific Reports"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] The development achievement of InnoTherapy's self-sealing injection needle for ophthalmic use has been disclosed through the Nature sister journal.

InnoTherapy announced on the 24th that the development achievement of the self-sealing injection needle for ophthalmic use, developed in collaboration with researchers from Korea University Hospital and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, was published in the Nature sister journal, Scientific Reports.

The self-sealing injection needle for ophthalmic use was initially developed as a no-bleeding vascular injection needle and expanded to ophthalmic use upon requests from medical sites. When various drugs are directly injected into the eye, expensive drugs can leak from the needle hole, or infectious bacteria can penetrate into the eye causing endophthalmitis.

InnoTherapy's ocular injection needle features a self-sealing functional film coated on the needle surface that swells in the ocular tissue as the needle is withdrawn, sealing the needle hole in the ocular tissue. This reduces drug loss and prevents infectious bacteria from penetrating into the eye, attracting attention.

A company representative stated, "The family patent related to this paper (self-sealing injection needle for suppressing ocular fistula and its manufacturing method) was registered in February," and added, "We plan to accelerate commercialization by collaborating with the ophthalmology professor team of Jongseok Song and Youngseop Eom at Korea University Hospital, utilizing the innovative medical device track."

They continued, "The self-sealing ocular injection can be applied not only to macular degeneration treatments such as 'Lucentis' and 'Eylea' that are directly injected into the eye but ultimately can be expanded to intratumoral injections," and added, "Especially, with the upcoming domestic launch of the representative gene therapy drug 'Luxturna,' active development of gene therapies for ophthalmic diseases is underway, so we expect to expand into the gene therapy field."