diorasis

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About Us

About Us

Diorasis Therapeutics is an ophthalmic early-stage company focusing on first-in-class disease-modifying gene-agnostic gene therapy for normalizing outflow facility in the trabecular meshwork and decreasing IOP in open angle glaucoma patients. We have multiple publications in leading ophthalmology and gene therapy journals of in vitro and in vivo experiments supporting the mechanism of action and demonstrating strong efficacy and preliminary safety in multiple small and large animals:
  • lowering IOP in steroid-induced glaucoma in mice
  • lowering IOP in myocilin genetic glaucoma model in mice
  • lowering IOP in steroid-induced glaucoma model in sheep
  • not-lowering IOP in normal mice (avoiding risk of hypotony)
Currently we are working on IND-enabling safety and toxicology experiments. Our goal is to transform the lives of millions of patients with glaucoma suffering from partial visual loss and minimize their risk of becoming completely blind. Diorasis in Greek means the power to perceive things in the future and the ability to see things that others cannot.
Our Team

Our Team

Diorasis Therapeutics was founded based on more than 20 years of award-winning glaucoma research in John Danias’ lab in Mt Sinai and SUNY.

Co-founders and Management

Remis Bistras, MBA, PhD

Co-founder and CEO

John Danias, MD, PhD

Co-founder and SAB member

Kali Stasi, MD, PhD

Co-founder and SAB member

SAB members

Dirk Sauer, PhD

SAB member

Kuldev Singh, MD

SAB member

Alfred S. Lewin, PhD

SAB member

Jeffrey Liebmann

SAB member

Consultants

Bodil Willumsen , PhD

CMC Consultant

Terete Borras, PhD

Research Consultant

Bodil Willumsen, PhD

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Bodil Willumsen, Ph.D., is an expert in gene therapy manufacturing. She is currently a CMC consultant in the field of cell & gene therapy
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Kuldev Singh, MD

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Dirk Sauer, PhD

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Dirk has more than 33 years of extensive experience in Pharmaceutical Research and Development and successfully led numerous projects and teams during all phases of the drug development process.
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Alfred Lewin, PhD

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Bodil Willumsen, PhD

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Bodil Willumsen, Ph.D., is an expert in gene therapy manufacturing. She is currently a CMC consultant in the field of cell & gene therapy
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Mark Milton, PhD

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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s
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Diorasis Therapeutics was founded based on more than 20 years of award-winning glaucoma research in John Danias’ lab in Mt Sinai and SUNY.

Founders and Management

Remis Bistras

CEO , MBA, PhD

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John Danias

MD, PhD

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Remis Bistras, MBA, PhD

Chief Executive Officer

John Danias, MD, PHD

Clinical Scientist

Kali Stasi ,MD

Managing Director

Kuldev Singh , MD

Managing Director

Remis Bistras ,MBA, PhD

President and Chief Executive Officer

John Danias ,MD,PHD

Clinician Scientist

Kali Stasi ,MD

Managing Director

Kuldev Singh , MD

Managing Director

Mark Milton, PHD

Scientific Advisor

Kali Stasi, MD, PHD

Scientific Advisor

Terete Borras, PHD

Scientific Advisor

Bodil Willumsen, PHD

Scientific Advisor

Kuldev Singh, MD

Scientific Advisor

Dirk Sauer, PHD

Scientific Advisor

Alfred Lewin, PHD

Scientific Advisor

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Remis Bistras, MBA, PhD

CEO of Diorasis Therapeutics
Remis Bistras is CEO of Diorasis Therapeutics. He has 20-plus years of executive management experience in ophthalmology and other biotech.

Remis started his biotech career at CIBA Vision/Novartis, where he was WW Director of Business Development and Licensing. At Novartis, he managed partnerships with smaller companies in eye care and ophthalmic pharmaceuticals and closed numerous multi-million licensing and M&A deals. He also was Vice President of BD Eye Gate Pharmaceuticals, where he partnered EyeGate’s ocular delivery program with large pharma and biotech companies.

Remis is a passionate entrepreneur and experienced leader who built and led Vittamed (neurodiagnostic) and Thermopharma (oncology) from academic projects to clinical-stage companies. He raised >$35M in venture capital funds, recruited development, regulatory, and clinical teams, and skillfully guided them.

Remis has PhD in Psychology from the University of Moscow and an MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University.

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Mark Milton, PhD
John Danias, MD, PhD

John Danias, MD, PhD

Co-founder and SAB member
John Danias, M.D., Ph.D. is a clinician scientist with over 25 years of experience in ophthalmology specializing in glaucoma. He is currently a Professor of Ophthalmology and Cell Biology in the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center where he served as chair of the Department of Ophthalmology from 2018-2023. Before coming to Downstate in 2009, Dr Danias was on the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NY. Dr. Danias is a member of the AUPO, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the American Glaucoma Society and the NY Glaucoma Society. He previously served as the Research Director council member for AUPO and as president of the NY glaucoma society. A devoted clinician-scientist, he has a busy medical and surgical glaucoma practice while performing cutting edge translational research. He is credited with developing innovative methods for accurately quantifying retinal ganglion cell loss and measuring the intraocular pressure non-invasively in animal glaucoma models. His work on complement in glaucoma has received the prestigious Lewis Rudin Award from the NY Academy of Medicine. Dr Danias is involved in a number of NIH funded ongoing research projects.

Dr. Danias received his MD and his PhD in Histology and Embryology from the University of Athens Medical School in Greece. Upon moving to the United States, he completed a pre-residency glaucoma research fellowship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and ophthalmology residency and clinical glaucoma fellowship at the Mount Sinai Medical Center.

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Remis Bistras, MBA, PhD
Kali Stasi, MD, PhD

Kali Stasi, MD, PhD

Co-founder and SAB member
Kalliopi “Kali” Stasi, M.D., Ph.D. is a renowned expert with over 20 years of experience in ophthalmology specializing in clinical development for gene and cell therapy. She is currently Adverum’s Senior Vice President of Clinical Development responsible for the company’s global strategic planning and execution of the clinical development programs of gene therapy for age related macular degeneration. Most recently, Dr. Stasi served as the senior vice president, clinical development and acting Chief Medical Officer at Tenpoint Therapeutics, where she oversaw clinical development for the cell therapy program for age-related macular degeneration and other ophthalmology indications. Prior to Tenpoint, Dr. Stasi served as the translational medical director at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research for more than 8 years, where she was an early clinical development leader of the gene and cell therapy ophthalmology pipeline including the first AAV internally generated, gene therapy program, and low molecular weight compounds for various indications. Previously, she was associate professor of Ophthalmology at University of Pennsylvania for 4 years, combining a busy medical and surgical anterior segment ophthalmology practice with cutting edge translational research on stem cell therapies.

Dr. Stasi earned her M.D. and Ph.D. in Neurodegenerative Diseases from the University of Patra, Greece. She completed ophthalmology residency at the University of Rochester NY, and a Cornea and Refractive Surgery Clinical fellowship at Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute. She also completed a post-doc glaucoma research fellowship at Mount Sinai under the mentorship of Dr. Danias (including work on complement that led to the Lewis Rudin Award from the NY Academy of Medicine) and completed a business post-baccalaureate program at Wharton Business School.

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John Danias, MD, PhD
Dirk Sauer, PhD

Dirk Sauer, PhD

SAB member
Dirk has more than 33 years of extensive experience in Pharmaceutical Research and Development and successfully led numerous projects and teams during all phases of the drug development process.

Dirk joined Novartis in 1989 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Neuroscience Preclinical Research Department. He subsequently held various positions of increasing responsibilities within preclinical research, clinical research and project management working on acute and chronic neurodegenerative diseases such as Stroke, Head Trauma, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and ALS.

In 2005 Dirk joined the Ophthalmology Business Unit at Novartis as Senior Global Project Leader for Visudyne and Lucentis. In October 2011 Dirk was appointed Global Development Unit Head for the Novartis Ophthalmology Development Unit, which since February 2016 included the development programs of the former Alcon Pharma franchise.

End of March 2021 Dirk retired from Novartis and since then is functioning as an independent strategic consultant and board member for companies within the field of Ophthalmology

Dirk has a degree in Pharmacy from the University of Münster, Germany and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Marburg, Germany.

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Kali Stasi, MD, PhD
Kuldev Singh, MD

Kuldev Singh, MD

SAB member
Kuldev Singh is Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of the Glaucoma Service. After receiving an undergraduate degree majoring in Biology and Economics at McGill University, he received his MD and MPH degrees from the Johns Hopkins University and was a Dana Foundation Fellow at the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital. Following residency training at the Casey Eye Institute and a Heed Foundation Fellowship at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Dr. Singh joined the Stanford faculty in 1992, rising to the rank of Professor in 2003. He has published over 200 original peer-reviewed articles and delivered over 350 invited lectures including over 70 named or keynote lectures and visiting professorships, edited three textbooks and served on the editorial boards of 11 ophthalmic publications. Dr. Singh’s current academic interests include glaucoma and cataract surgery, the epidemiology of myopia and glaucoma, ophthalmic genetics, as well as health care delivery in underserved communities in the United States and overseas. He is an investigator in the National Institutes of Health funded NEI Glaucoma Human Genetics Collaboration and is funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to study patient related outcomes with minimally invasive glaucoma surgery. Dr. Singh’s clinical practice focuses on the medical, laser and surgical management of glaucoma and cataract.

Dr. Singh has served as President of the American Glaucoma Society, Executive Vice President of the World Glaucoma Association and Board Chair for the Glaucoma Research Foundation and serves on the Advisory Committee of the International Society of Glaucoma Surgery. He serves as a member of the FDA Advisory Committee on Ophthalmic Devices and the Executive Committee of the UCSF/Stanford Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI) which is an FDA funded initiative. As a CERSI leader, Dr. Singh created an annual FDA supported UCSF/Stanford Innovations in Regulatory Science Summit for which he serves as co-chair of the organizing committee. Dr. Singh served as a consultant for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute for which he assisted NASA in solving eye problems related to space travel and was co-chair of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology ARVO/ARVO Asia Translational Vision Summit Steering Committee. He received the 2015 Life Achievement Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and delivered the keynote American Glaucoma Society Lecture at the 2017 AAO Glaucoma Meeting.

Dr. Singh served as an Academic Advising Dean at the School of Medicine from 2002-2005 and two three year terms as an elected at-large member of the Faculty Senate from 2006-2012. He received the 2006 School of Medicine Franklin G. Ebaugh Jr. Award for excellence in advising medical students and was one of two recipients of the 2012 University-wide Asian American Faculty Award. Dr. Singh currently serves on the Organizing Committee of the annual Stanford Drug Discovery Symposium and is co-chair of Ophthalmology Futures Forum, a global ophthalmic innovation meeting. Since 2021, he has served on the Board of Trustees of Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley, CA.

Dr. Singh received the World Glaucoma Association Founder’s Award in 2013 and was inducted into the Delta Omega Public Health Honor Society at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health as a distinguished alumnus in 2014. A global nomination based survey conducted in 2018 by The Ophthalmologist, a U.K. based publication, ranked Dr. Singh as one of the 15 most influential individuals in ophthalmology worldwide.

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Dirk Sauer, PhD
Alfred S. Lewin, PhD

Alfred S. Lewin, PhD

SAB member
Dr. Lewin received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, studying mitochondrial molecular genetics and conducted postdoctoral research on mitochondrial protein import at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Since 1994, he has worked on gene therapy for treatment for inherited retinal degeneration and inflammatory diseases of the retina. In addition to gene therapy, he developed drug therapies for age-related macular degeneration and uveitis. Dr. Lewin was Shaler-Richardson Professor of Ophthalmic Sciences and Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Florida.

Dr. Lewin was awarded the Board of Directors Award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness and received the Elisabeth Anderson Macular Degeneration Research Award from the BrightFocus Foundation. He is a member of the editorial boards of several journals and has been a regular member of NIH grant review panels.

He is on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Foundation Fighting Blindness and the Macular Degeneration Research section of the BrightFocus Foundation. Dr. Lewin is a Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and is currently Professor Emeritus of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Florida.

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Kuldev Singh, MD
Jeffrey Liebmann

Jeffrey Liebmann

SAB member
Dr. Jeffrey Liebmann serves as Shirlee and Bernard Brown Professor, Vice-Chair, and Director of the Glaucoma Division of the Department Ophthalmology at Columbia University Medical Center. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and American College of Surgeons.

Dr. Liebmann serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the World Glaucoma Association, Board of Directors of The Glaucoma Foundation and Secretary-Treasurer of the New York Glaucoma Society.

Dr. Liebmann is a past-President of the World Glaucoma Association, American Glaucoma Society, and the New York Society for Clinical Ophthalmology, Emeritus Editor-in Chief of Journal of Glaucoma and was co-founder of the New York Glaucoma Research Institute, the American Glaucoma Society Foundation and ASCRS Glaucoma Day.

In addition to maintaining a busy tertiary-care referral practice in New York City, Dr. Liebmann is Principal Investigator for the NIH African Descent and Glaucoma Evaluation Study (ADAGES) and Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS III) at Columbia University and is the author and/or co-author of more than 1000 medical and scientific papers, book chapters, and abstracts.

He has lectured widely in the United States and abroad on glaucoma diagnosis and management. His current main areas of research interest include the causes of glaucoma, glaucoma progression, glaucoma surgery, ocular imaging, and neuroprotection.

Dr. Jeffrey M. Liebmann graduated from Boston University School of Medicine, completed his ophthalmology residency at the State University of New York/Downstate Medical Center, and his glaucoma fellowship at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.

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Alfred S. Lewin, PhD
Bodil Willumsen , PhD

Bodil Willumsen, PhD

CMC Consultant
Bodil Willumsen, Ph.D., is an expert in gene therapy manufacturing. She is currently a CMC consultant in the field of cell & gene therapy. Before this, she worked as a Director at Novartis, where for 9 years she was responsible for developing, manufacturing, and commercializing the lentiviral vector for Kymriah; the first CAR-T cell therapy to reach the market. She worked with a number of cell & gene therapy products while at Novartis and at last was also responsible for the suppliers for Luxturna, an AAV gene therapy for inherited retinal dystrophy.

Bodil has 25 years of experience within CMC and the development of biopharmaceuticals, from preclinical to marketed product. Her experience encompasses a wide range of biologics platforms, from viral vectors, CAR-T and gene therapies to recombinant proteins and ADCs. Before Novartis, she worked in several biotech companies, taking innovative technologies into clinical trials. Four of the products she has worked on in the development phases are now commercial products.

Bodil earned a M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Washington.

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Jeffrey Liebmann
Terete Borras, PhD

Terete Borras, PhD

Research Consultant
Dr. Terete Borrás is an ocular molecular biologist and internationally recognized scientist in gene therapy for glaucoma. She recently retired after twenty years as Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of Research at the University of North Carolina.

She has pioneered new strategies for the identification of genes, delivery methods and generation of animal models of elevated IOP. Among her achievements, she isolated candidate genes, which are responsible for maintaining physiological IOP, successfully lower nocturnal pressure elevation in rats and counteract steroid-induced elevated IOP in sheep. She developed optimized viral vectors that delivered these genes with long-term increased efficiency, without eliciting toxicity or an immune response. She has organized numerous national and international meetings, such sections of ARVO, APAO, ISER and The Glaucoma Foundation (TGF) Think Tanks. She is the recipient of the “Jules and Doris Stein Professorship Award” from the Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB), the Association of International Glaucoma Societies (AIGS) Award for breakthrough in Glaucoma Research, the President of the Pontevedra Government Award for Distinguished Glaucoma Research and the Robert Ritch Award for Excellence and Innovation in Glaucoma.

She received her master’s degree from the University of Madrid (Spain) and her PhD in Molecular Biology under a collaborative program of Madrid and Purdue (Indiana) Universities. She received her postdoctoral fellowship training at the National Eye Institute (NEI)

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Bodil Willumsen , PhD
Mark Milton, PhD

Mark N. Milton, PhD

Preclinical Consultant
Mark Milton is a well-known expert in the field of Gene Therapies and Biologics. In March 2022 he retired after 31 years in the pharmaceutical industry and currently is the Principal of Lake Boon Pharmaceutical Consulting LLC, providing nonclinical and clinical consulting services on the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, immunogenicity, and bioanalytics of Gene Therapies and Biologics.

Mark started his pharmaceutical career at G.D.Searle in Skokie, Illinois after a Post-Doc at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Subsequently, he worked for Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Tempo Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA before joining Novartis in 2009.

At Novartis Mark provided leadership in ocular pharmacokinetics and immunogenicity, the PK/PD/IG of Biologics and Gene Therapies, and first in human clinical trials. At Novartis Mark made pivotal contributions to the development of Luxturna, Zolgensma, Kymriah, and numerous other Gene Therapies.

Prior to retiring, Mark was active in several Pharmaceutical Industry Associations. He was the Chair of the BioSafe PKPD Expert Working Group, a member of the BioSafe Leadership Committee, a member of the IQ Board of Directors, and was the BIO observer to the ICHS3A Q&A WG.

He has published over 30 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and presented extensively on the development of NCEs, Biologics, and Gene Therapies. His current interests include the PK/PD and immunogenicity of biotherapeutics, the contribution of PK (biodistribution) and immunogenicity to the development of gene therapies, ocular immunology, the selection of the starting dose and alternative designs for FIH Clinical Trials of monoclonal antibodies in Healthy Volunteers.

Mark received a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and Soil Science from University College of North Wales, Bangor, a M.Sc. in Toxicology and Ph.D. in Biochemical Toxicology from the University of Surrey, England.

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Terete Borras, PhD
Remis Bistras, MBA, PhD