OKYO Pharma Limited (LON:OKYO) appointed Dr Rajkumar Patil as its chief scientific officer.
OKYO said Patil brings 30 years of ophthalmic and pharmaceutical research & development (R&D) experience.
Patil worked with Ora Inc as vice-president of research & development (R&D), where he was responsible for driving all anterior and posterior segment research of Ora’s R&D Institute.
During 2013-2018, he worked at iVeena Delivery Systems as vice-president of Advanced Ocular Delivery Systems. His term at iVeena included a two-year sabbatical in Singapore, where he served as an associate professor of Ophthalmology at DUKE/NUS Medical School and principal investigator at Singapore Eye Research Institute.
“Dr Patil has enormous experience in the clinical development of ophthalmic drugs, and he will be spearheading the development of our lead drug candidate, OK-101 to treat dry eye disease, a major unmet medical need in the ophthalmic space,” said Gary Jacob, the chief executive officer of OKYO.
Patil said he was thrilled to join the OKYO team.
“Lack of adequate treatments for dry eye and ocular allergy highly motivates me to find better and safer therapies for these disorders. I am specifically excited to lead the translational work supporting a novel approach to develop Chemerin receptor GPCR agonist (OK-101) that targets the inflammatory and analgesic pathways to treat dry eye syndrome, uveitis and allergic conjunctivitis," he said.