Pandorum’s Liquid Cornea enters trials

Pandorum Technologies says its “liquid cornea” program, Kuragenx, has moved into first-in-human evaluation — a notable step for a company that had been talking publicly about animal work and translational partnerships, but not yet about clinical use in people. The company also closed an $18 million Series B round on February 9, 2026, saying the money would help fund clinical development, manufacturing scale-up and expansion across the United States, Japan and the Middle East. (businesswire.com) What Pandorum is describing is not a conventional donor cornea transplant. On its website, the Bengaluru- and San Carlos-based company calls Kuragenx a “liquid cornea” and says it is built from regenerative exosomes and tissue-mimetic biomaterials intended to help rebuild damaged corneal tissue. Pandorum says the material spreads after application and then solidifies within minutes. Its technology page describes a cornea-specific proprietary “bio-ink” designed to mimic native tissue properties and support scar-less wound healing. (pandorum.com) The immediate reason people are paying attention is the jump from preclinical claims to human testing. Pandorum’s cornea page says the product had “worked on hundreds of rabbits,” while its collaborators page says Northwestern University is joining Pandorum “to spearhead the First in Human clinical study” for Kuragenx. That is the clearest public indication, from the company’s own materials, that the program has crossed into a clinical phase rather than remaining only in lab or animal work. (pandorum.com) The medical target is severe corneal damage, not routine vision correction. Pandorum says corneal opacity accounts for more than 4% of blindness worldwide and says corneal ulceration and neurotrophic keratitis are among the conditions it is trying to address. The company argues that those cases can be difficult to treat because donor tissue is scarce and some patients face high transplant-rejection risk. Those burden estimates and treatment claims come from Pandorum’s own materials, not from published trial results. (pandorum.com) The funding round helps explain why the clinical step is happening now. Business Wire reported on February 9 that Protons Corporate led the $18 million Series B, with participation from Galentic Pharma, Ashish Kacholia, Noblevast Advisory and Avinya Fund, and the Burman family, among others. Pandorum said the proceeds would support clinical development of exosome-based therapies including Kuragenx, alongside global manufacturing plans. (businesswire.com) The company has also been building the operating network around the program. Pandorum said its clinical translation efforts involve Dr. Virender Singh Sangwan of Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital in New Delhi, Dr. Shigeru Kinoshita of Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, and Drs. Ramez Haddadin and Satish Nadig of Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. It also said AGC Biologics in Italy will support manufacturing for U.S. and European markets, while Nucelion Therapeutics, a Bharat Biotech subsidiary in India, will support Asia-Pacific supply. (businesswire.com) What is still missing is the part investors, doctors and patients usually want first: a public trial record with protocol details and human data. A targeted search did not surface a clearly identifiable ClinicalTrials.gov listing for Kuragenx, and the Indian registry pages that appeared in search results were not accessible enough here to confirm a trial identifier. So the key verified facts are narrower: Pandorum has announced first-in-human work through its own site, named Northwestern as a clinical partner, and tied that effort to fresh Series B financing. The next hard proof point will be a registry entry, formal investigator disclosures, or initial safety data from the first treated patients. (pandorum.com)