Theialife’s race to bring a childhood myopia treatment to market

And welcome to Beyond Biotech, the weekly podcast from LeBiotech. I'm Dylan Kossain, and this is episode 16 for the podcast. By 2050, nearly half of the world s population is expected to be myopic, with around a billion people projected to progress to high myopia, a leading cause of irreversible vision loss later in life. Children face a narrow window in which to intervene, while the eye is still growing, before those structural changes become permanent. Yet despite the scale of the problem, there is still no FDA approved drug that slows myopia progression in children My guest today is Thomas Rugia, President and CEO of TheaLife, a late stage biotech developing an oral therapy for pediatric myopia derived from a natural caffeine metabolite. Tom joins TheaLife after twenty five years in ophthalmology leadership, including roles at Johnson and Johnson, Alcon, Novartis, and most recently as CEO of Samsara Vision. We talk mechanism, evidence, and the road to phase three. I hope you enjoy my interview with Thomas Ruggia. Tom, welcome to Beyond Biotech. Hello, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your time. Tom, you've had a career now, twenty five years across some big pharma, most recently as a CEO of Samsara Vision. Now you're at a late stage clinical biotech and you've left that commercial stage device company world. What made you want to take that leap? Yeah, think this is the most important innovation of recent years in ophthalmology. We're going to get into today pediatric progressive myopia, which is what we're trying to tackle at TheaLife, and the opportunity came to me and it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, and you just can't say no to something like that. Although I've loved my time, twenty six years in ophthalmology, fifteen years with Alcon, five years with Johnson and Johnson, most recent six years with Samsara Vision as CEO in medical device ophthalmology. Here though, this biotech company has I think a real big promise with a delivery mechanism that's ideal for children and a mechanism of action that's going to change the trajectory of high myopia. We're going get into all the definitions of what myopia is, but really my rationale for joining TheaLife is really the size of the prize here, is the biggest, maybe in the history of eye care. Samsara, you were working on macular degeneration for older adults. Your company now is at the other end of the age spectrum, working with children whose eyes are still developing. Is there anything that crosses over between those two worlds? Yeah, less in the patient, maybe more in the business. The eye care business, although we talk about pharmaceutical, consumer med tech and surgical medical technology as different things, and in some industries they truly are. In ophthalmology, a lot of the base connective tissue is there, so the customers, whether that be cornea specialists, pediatric ophthalmologists, optometrists, these are people who engage with pharmaceutical products, medical technology, surgical technology, so …