Cathy Tie has an au­dac­i­ty more typ­i­cal of a tech start­up founder than a biotech ex­ec­u­tive. She dropped out of col­lege to start a ge­net­ic screen­ing com­pa­ny and lat­er found­ed a telemed­i­cine start­up. The 29-year-old has been on two Forbes “30 un­der 30” lists (Ed­i­tor’s note: Not al­ways a good thing!) and calls her­self “Biotech Bar­bie,” yet un­til re­cent­ly, she hadn’t been on the radars of most peo­ple in biotech.

That changed last year when she an­nounced her ap­par­ent mar­riage and sub­se­quent breakup with He Jiankui, the in­fa­mous sci­en­tist who was jailed in Chi­na for us­ing CRISPR to cre­ate the world’s first gene-edit­ed ba­bies in 2018. Tie’s re­la­tion­ship with a sci­en­tif­ic pari­ah was quick­ly fol­lowed by the launch in Au­gust of a US com­pa­ny called the Man­hat­tan Project.

Ocu­gen said it will take its gene ther­a­py for a form of vi­sion loss in­to a Phase 3 tri­al, af­ter re­port­ing mixed re­sults on Tues­day from a small­er study.

The gene ther­a­py is for pa­tients with ge­o­graph­ic at­ro­phy, an ad­vanced form of the eye dis­ease dry age-re­lat­ed mac­u­lar de­gen­er­a­tion that can lead to grad­ual loss of vi­sion as eye cells die. It's pitch­ing the treat­ment as an al­ter­na­tive to reg­u­lar in­jec­tions. Two of those in­jec­tions, Apel­lis Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ Syfovre and Astel­las’ Iz­er­vay, were ap­proved in the US in 2023 for the eye con­di­tion.

In the Phase 2 tri­al de­scribed Tues­day, Ocu­gen en­rolled 51 pa­tients: One-third re­ceived a low­er dose of the gene ther­a­py, OCU410, one-third re­ceived a high­er dose, and one-third re­ceived no treat­ment. It re­port­ed no se­ri­ous side ef­fects in the tri­al.

A group of biotech in­vestors will meet with mem­bers of a con­gres­sion­al com­mis­sion that's been charged with keep­ing the US com­pet­i­tive in biotech and pro­tect­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, amid the rise of Chi­na's own life sci­ences in­dus­try and shift­ing pric­ing dy­nam­ics around the globe.

Known as the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mis­sion on Emerg­ing Biotech­nol­o­gy (NSCEB), the group was es­tab­lished in 2021, and has been hold­ing ses­sions with biotech stake­hold­ers, as well as hold­ing lis­ten­ing events around the US. On Tues­day, it will meet with at least sev­en biotech in­vestors, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from JP Mor­gan, Pfiz­er, and sev­er­al oth­er ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, End­points News has learned.

Ac­cord­ing to an agen­da and at­tendee list re­viewed by End­points, the group will dis­cuss the com­mis­sion’s pri­or­i­ties, the im­pacts of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s push to low­er drug prices, FDA un­cer­tain­ty and IP pro­tec­tions.