8 December 2021 - - UK-based clinical-stage gene therapy company Gyroscope Therapeutics Holdings plc has appointed biotech industry veteran Anthony Adamis, M.D., to the Gyroscope board of directors, effective immediately, the company said.

Dr. Adamis most recently served as senior vice president of Development Innovation at Genentech/Roche and brings more than 30 years of industry research and development experience to the role.

With his deep research and industry expertise, Dr. Adamis is best known for co-discovering the central role of vascular endothelial growth factor in ocular vascular disease, including age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

He has guided the development of 20 medicines in global clinical trials involving more than 25,000 patients.

These development programmes led to 24 approvals by the US Food and Drug Administration across various indications.

Dr. Adamis received his medical degree with honours from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

He completed his ophthalmology residency at the University of Michigan and his fellowship at Harvard.

In 2000, Dr. Adamis co-founded Eyetech Pharmaceuticals, which developed and obtained FDA approval for the first anti-VEGF medicine in ophthalmology.

With the introduction of anti-VEGF drugs, the rates of legal blindness from neovascular AMD and diabetic eye disease have decreased by half globally.

Dr. Adamis also recently joined the board of directors of RD Funds, the venture arm of the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

Gyroscope Therapeutics is a clinical-stage gene therapy company developing gene therapy beyond rare disease to treat diseases of the eye that cause vision loss and blindness.

Its lead investigational gene therapy, GT005, is currently being evaluated in Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of geographic atrophy secondary to age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness.