Wesley Jackson
President & Chief Scientific Officer Valitor
Wesley Jackson, Ph.D., is a scientist, engineer, and serial life sciences entrepreneur. He is currently serving as President and CSO of Valitor, a biotechnology company that he co-founded to develop treatments for vision-threatening diseases based on a novel protein-biopolymer conjugation technology. Wes is also an advisor to early-stage vision science startups to assist with their launch phase by assisting with scientific strategies, IP portfolio development, fundraising, and commercialization plans. He has previously been a scientist and researcher affiliated with several universities, including U.C. Berkeley, and governmental agencies, such as National Institutes of Health. Dr. Jackson has a Ph.D. in Bioengineering with an emphasis on drug delivery from the U.C. San Francisco and U.C. Berkeley and a B.S. in Bioengineering from U.C. Berkeley.
Seminars
- Why does early recruitment remain a bottleneck, especially for injected therapies in conservative indications like glaucoma?
- How do we design devices and protocols for operators who aren’t traditionally trained in injection procedures? • How do we push back against unrealistic investor timelines and expectations for one-and-done cures?
- What happens when a formulation looks great in vitro but fails due to real-world hurdles like sterilization or inflammatory responses?Â
Intravitreal injection remains the most accessible and widely adopted method for delivering therapeutics to the back of the eye. Although the procedure has become routine and the manufacturing can be readily scaled, complex challenges still emerge in the development of new retinal medicines. This session explores evolving design strategies to optimize delivery, formulation compatibility, and dose control.
- From early devices to new designs, inconsistent dosing intervals between patients remains a obstacle during clinical development, making this a key focus for innovation
- High-concentration, low-volume delivery is essential to reach retinal targets, but these formulations introduce manufacturing and stability issues
- Formulation viscosity, needle size, and visual interference are key considerations that need to be addressed when designing for clinical and adoption success
- Biologics and other large molecules amplify the challenges encountered for intravitreal drug development, so stable small molecules remain dominant
- Overcoming these barriers for all drug modalities is critical for broader therapeutic expansion
