Amar Sawhney, Ph.D.

Election to the academy is among the highest professional distinctions for an engineer. Membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research and practice, including pioneering of new and developing fields of technology and making major advancements in engineering. In all, 87 new members and 18 foreign members were elected into the academy in 2020.

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Amarpreet Singh Sawhney (M.S. ChE 1989, Ph.D. ChE 1992) is president and chairman of Instylla Inc. and chairman of Ocular Therapeutix Inc. He was recognized by the NAE for the development of innovative medical devices that have affected millions of patients. He has been named a Champion of Change by the White House and an Outstanding American by Choice by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. He is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship from TiE Boston and the Product Innovation Award from Frost and Sullivan. He received a B.T. from IIT Delhi and an M.S. and Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin, all in chemical engineering… Read the full article.

Eye drops are a pain. Depending on the type, they can sting the eyes or cause other side effects, and remembering to use them every day is a nuisance. Ocular Therapeutix is one of the companies trying to come up with an alternative—a sustained-release drug delivery device that’s implanted in the eye, and dissolves when it’s done. While there’s still more to prove before the technology can head to market, it took an important step in that direction today with some good news from a clinical trial.

Bedford, MA-based Ocular (NASDAQ: OCUL) reported positive results from the first of two Phase 3 trials testing the safety and effectiveness of OTX-DP, an implantable device that, in this study, delivered the steroid dexamethasone into the eye over about four weeks. Ocular said the drug hit its two primary goals in a study of 247 patients with pain and inflammation following cataract surgery: compared to a placebo, it reduced pain after eight days, and it reduced the number of inflammatory cells in the eye after 14 days. The results were statistically significant, meaning they weren’t likely to be due to chance.

Ocular didn’t say whether the drug hit on certain secondary efficacy measures, however—like measures of pain on other days patients were evaluated, or the presence of so-called “flares,” or proteins in eye fluid that build up due to inflammation.

Still, Ocular said if it sees similarly positive results in a second Phase 3 study, from which it expects ha have results at the end of March, it’ll file for regulatory approval of its device later this year.

“This is an exciting day for Ocular Therapeutix as our sustained release drug delivery platform continues to provide strong data in our clinical trials in multiple indications,” said president and CEO Amar Sawhney, in a statement. “The ability to administer the entire course of therapy for post-operative inflammation and pain with a single dose would remove the onus from patients to follow complex pharmaceutical dosing regimens while providing the desired tapered therapeutic effect.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the pending induction of Amar Sawhney, Ph.D., CEO, , Ocular Therapeutix, to its College of Fellows. Dr. Sawhney was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows For outstanding contributions to the design of novel biomaterials and devices and their translation into clinical products.