Acucela Inc. is a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing therapies for blinding eye diseases. Neurodegenerative retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), Stargardt disease, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathy and retinopathy of prematurity significantly affect quality of life of patients, and there is a drastic lack of therapies available.

Acucela is employing a novel approach to treat AMD by developing small molecules which modulate the visual cycle. A Phase I clinical trial is underway for dry AMD.

Acucela Inc. has two divisions:

The Drug Discovery and Development Division serves to discover and develop drug compounds to treat retinal eye diseases. Acucela has initiated Phase I clinical trial of the visual cycle modulator for dry AMD.

The OcuScreen^TM Division provides services to pharmaceutical companies and other customers, using Acucela's proprietary technologies to generate data on custom drug compounds. Three papers have been published on OcuScreen^TM assays (see the "news" section for more details).