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Qlaris Bio

Qlaris Bio

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About Us

About Us

We are on a mission to preserve vision and prevent blindness.

Our Story

Qlaris was founded upon a singular concept—that a comprehensive and complementary approach combining all aspects of scientific, medical, business, and strategic considerations can lead to unique insights enabling creative new ways to unlock value for patients suffering from debilitating ophthalmic diseases. This approach was uniquely realized due to the synergistic expertise of our co-founders.

Through their perseverance, a disruptive opportunity was realized in glaucoma, by targeting a critical component of intraocular pressure that was until recently considered immutable, untreatable, and untouchable. That key component—episcleral venous pressure (EVP)—was discovered to be addressable in the laboratory of Professor Michael Fautsch, PhD, at Mayo Clinic and is now being developed at Qlaris Bio with the promise of being a truly complementary mechanism to other drugs and drainage devices currently available to patients.

Beyond EVP, Qlaris Bio is now also embarking on an additional ground-breaking path to deliver sustained IOP-lowering without the need for a sustained-release polymer and to also provide IOP-independent neuroprotection thanks to further research on targeted gene delivery.

Our Team

Thurein Htoo, MS, MBA

Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder

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Barbara Wirostko, MD, FARVO

Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder

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Hemchand K. Sookdeo, PMP, LSSGB, CSM

Vice President, Project Management and Portfolio Operations

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Lisa Brandano

Senior Director, Clinical Operations

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Cynthia Steel, PhD, MBA

Director, Translational Research

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Ralph Casale

Director, Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls

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Daniel DeWalt

Project Manager

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Laura Rykard

Executive Assistant

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Board of Directors

Thurein Htoo, MS, MBA

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Wende Hutton

Ron Hunt

Andrew Danielsen

Adrienne Graves

Scientific Advisory Board

Michael Fautsch, PhD (Chair)

Peter Farina, PhD

Alon Harris, MS, PhD, FARVO

Shan Lin, MD

Janet Serle, MD

Dan Stamer, PhD, FARVO

Carol Toris, PhD

Investors

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