Alcon terminated its PowerVision intraocular lens (IOL) technology program after recent clinical study data showed unpredictable postoperative outcomes.
The program’s termination resulted in a $402 million write-off during the second quarter. Alcon acquired PowerVision in 2019 for $285 million, and despite the program’s failures, the company continues to invest in next-generation IOL technology.
“We made the decision to discontinue our work on the PowerVision IOL programs,” Alcon CEO David Endicott said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call. “… This data demonstrated persistent, unpredictable shifts in postoperative distance vision in a subset of patients that remain unresolved after multiple developmental efforts. As a result, the programs did not meet our standards for visual performance and patient outcomes.”
Endicott said the company learned “valuable insights” from the program that will advance future innovation efforts.
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“We’ve got a lot of really great science and a lot of great scientists who I think have a better informed, probably the world’s best informed vision of how it is that we could get to an accommodating lens,” he said. “I just don’t know that we have the technology yet.
“We’ve probably been through a number of accommodating ideas over the last four or five years, including PowerVision, and we’ll continue to look at them,” Endicott said. “There’s still more out there. Somebody’s got to figure this out. I suspect it’ll be us, but we’re watching very carefully.”
A new collaboration with RxSight
In July, the company entered a non-exclusive IOL collaboration with RxSight.
In the deal, RxSight will receive $60 million up front and up to $140 million in additional payments contingent on development and regulatory milestones. Alcon will lead global commercialization efforts while RxSight handles development and manufacturing.
Endicott said Alcon’s collaboration with RxSight is still in the early stages, but harped on the companies’ goals.
“Together, we aim to develop a next-generation lens designed specifically for the platform with the potential to further enhance visual performance and refractive precision,” he said.
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He also said the decision to shut down PowerVision and collaborate with RxSight wasn’t a trade-off, rather a change of direction.
“I don’t think we’ve made a decision to do one or the other,” he said. “I think we still think that adjustable accommodating is the best long-term answer. We just couldn’t get there with this particular technology. I would describe these as two different ideas.
“RxSight really is an idea about how we take a step forward in tunability with an optic that we already have or one that we could design for it, and I would call that an intermediate step towards where I think we need to go, which is long-term into an accommodating lens,” Endicott said.
