Akoustis Technologies Inc

• US
• Akoustis Technologies Inc
• Public-Utilities

AKTS

We are a precision genetic medicine company dedicated to our mission of developing gene therapies with the potential to restore, improve, and preserve high-acuity physiologic hearing for people worldwide who live with disabling hearing loss. We have built a precision genetic medicine platform that incorporates a proprietary vector library consisting of variants of a small virus commonly used in gene therapy, known as adeno-associated virus, or AAV, and a novel delivery approach. We are executing on our core strategic initiatives, which include the advancement of our lead product candidate, AK-OTOF, expansion of our pipeline, and development of internal manufacturing capabilities and, ultimately, a commercial infrastructure. Our aim is to leverage our capabilities to become a fully integrated biotechnology company. We believe our platform and our team together provide a unique advantage to efficiently develop potential genetic medicines for a variety of inner ear disorders.

              Hearing loss is one of the world's largest unmet medical needs. Approximately 466 million people around the world, including 34 million children, live with disabling hearing loss, and a growing body of evidence suggests hearing loss can have a significant impact on cognitive development, psychiatric health, and healthy aging. We estimate that AK-OTOF has a potential addressable population of up to approximately 7,000 individuals, which is a subset of the total population of individuals with hearing loss due to mutations in the otoferlin, or OTOF, gene in the United States and European Union in the aggregate. Recent advances in genetic medicine have created the possibility of addressing the root cause of disorders that have a genetic basis. Serious disorders that previously had no pharmacologic treatments and, in some cases, insufficient non-pharmacologic treatments now have the potential to be addressed with one-time gene therapy administrations, including potential gene editing therapies, that can restore critical function to the eye, the spinal cord, the brain, and other organs. Despite these advances, we believe genetic medicine development for hearing disorders has been hindered by the unique anatomical delivery challenges of the inner ear. To overcome these challenges, our team has combined a proprietary vector library of synthetic AAVs that recreates the evolutionary lineage of current naturally occurring viruses, known as ancestral AAV, or AAVAnc, and a novel, minimally invasive delivery approach that allows us to utilize AAV-enabled multimodal capabilities, including viral delivery to the target cell population where the full-length transgene is split into two vectors, known as a dual vector method.

              Our focused candidate selection criteria allow us to identify promising targets covering a range of inner ear cell types, including sensory hair cell and non-sensory supporting cells, to treat a broad range of inner ear disorders. We seek programs that have clinically well-established, objective, and quantifiable endpoints that can be incorporated in translatable preclinical models during development, which we believe may provide drug development advantages, including the potential for more rapid clinical development. Additionally, given the epidemiology and severity of the disorders we are initially targeting, available regulatory pathways such as orphan drug designation and expedited pathways for serious conditions may provide the potential for more rapid regulatory approval. Our clinical development plan includes measurement of the auditory brainstem response, or ABR, an objective, clinically accepted endpoint, which we believe provides both clinical and regulatory advantages. 
 

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