In Dry Eye, A Variety Of Mechanisms Pursue Established Therapies

While Allergan PLC and Shire PLC are jockeying for supremacy in the dry eye disease space, with the former's Restasis (cyclosporine ophthalmic emulsion) losing market share to the latter's Xiidra (lifitegrast), a host of other companies have candidates in clinical development for dry eye addressing a wide variety of targets in the hopes of bettering the existing therapies or benefiting an underserved niche.

Shire, which in 2016 launched Xiidra, the first drug approved to treat the signs and symptoms of dry eye, has been trying to expand the market with disease-awareness efforts. Restasis, approved in 2002, has flourished into a blockbuster with an indication to increase a patient's natural ability to produce tears