Allergan (AGN) is appealing to the Supreme Court in an effort to stall generic competition to its best-selling dry-eye drug Restasis. But the pharma giant also faces a threat on a different front: a small Canadian drug maker advancing its own medicine that could prove superior to Restasis.
The experimental dry-eye medicine is called VOS, a shorthand moniker for voclosporin ophthalmic solution. It’s being developed by Aurinia Pharmaceuticals (AUPH), a drug maker based in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.
VOS is a side hustle for Aurinia, which is otherwise devoting most of its resources toward completing a Phase 3 clinical trial in lupus nephritis using a different formulation of voclosporin. But the lupus study results won’t read out until the end of the year, which elevates the urgency of the VOS study in dry eye.
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