Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) Industry-University Cooperation (Director Son Jeong-min) announced on the 27th that the "Prevention and Treatment of Ocular Diseases Using Siknamu" technology it holds has been licensed to promising bio company BioStream Co., Ltd. for commercialization.

This technology consolidates the natural-product know-how of JBNU Professor Kim Jeong-hyun (Department of Dentistry). In the context of a rising prevalence of ocular diseases, it is an innovative technology that uses components extracted from Siknamu, a plant native to Korea, to develop ocular disease prevention and therapeutic agents with reduced side effects and enhanced efficacy capable of preventing and treating dry eye and macular degeneration.

Recently, dry eye has become a common condition in the country, with prevalence exceeding 50%, but it is increasingly regarded as a minor ailment and neglected. However, it can cause serious complications, so prevention and management are necessary.

Also, macular degeneration is a devastating ocular disease, ranked among the three leading causes of blindness together with glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. While an injectable drug has been developed for the neovascular (wet) form, there are currently no treatments for the dry form, which accounts for 90% of cases, making prevention essential.

Existing agents used mainly for ocular disease prevention, such as lutein and omega-3, have not been recognized as pharmaceuticals due to minimal preventive effects, and their raw materials are entirely imported.

However, Siknamu extract can be produced domestically using a native plant, and its strengths include potential applicability to various ocular conditions, such as alleviating dryness symptoms, reducing inflammation, enhancing photoreceptor activity and reducing photoreceptor damage, and decreasing retinal layer thinning. While existing raw materials have limited formulations due to compositional constraints, Siknamu extract can be developed not only as an ophthalmic solution but also into various pharmaceutical compositions suitable for topical, transdermal, and other routes of administration, and is therefore expected to be broadly applicable to ocular diseases.

Professor Kim Jeong-hyun has accelerated the technology's commercialization and steadily improved its technology readiness level (TRL) through in-vivo and in-vitro experiments and various commercialization know-how, including GMP production of the raw material, safety testing (GLP toxicity testing), and marker component analysis (test reports), attracting considerable interest from numerous companies.

BioStream Co., Ltd., which signed a contract with JBNU, was established in 2000 and, as a company possessing core biotech infrastructure, leads not only in bio industries such as health functional foods and pharmaceuticals but also in bioengineering sectors for production and processes.

Son Jeong-min, Director of JBNU Industry-University Cooperation, said, "This technology transfer is a representative Lab-to-Market model in which a university's excellent technology is commercialized through a promising company," and added, "We will spare no effort or support to continuously establish JBNU's own glocal technology commercialization ecosystem, creating and commercializing bio technologies, which are a key industry of Jeollabuk Special Self-Governing Province."