Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Shankar Musunuri, Chairman of the Board, CEO, and Co-Founder of Ocugen, is developing gene therapies for rare blindness diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt disease, which have significant unmet medical needs. The modifier gene therapy approach aims to reset homeostasis and create a healthy environment for photoreceptors to stabilize vision loss. Ocugen is also working on a gene therapy for dry age-related macular degeneration, which has the potential to address the late-stage geographic atrophy form of the disease. Shankar explains, "Vision is the most important part for all of us. Many years ago, when we founded Ocugen, it was based on targeting the ophthalmology disease area. We looked into many blindness diseases related to the back of the eye/retina. We have diseases such as AMD- and many people get into that – age-related macular degeneration. Then, there are diseases that are inherited in nature, like retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt disease. A lot of these diseases impact many famil