CEO Message

Dear Shareholders,

"A World without Blindness"

The goal of the company hasn't changed since the company was founded in 2002. Our greatest mission is to translate innovation into a diverse portfolio of drugs and devices to preserve and restore vision for millions of people worldwide. As a biotech company, we specialize in the field of ophthalmology to promote the digitization of medical care. Being able to see adds hope, comfort, excitement, and more to our lives. We, the Kubota Pharmaceutical Group, are more determined than ever to maximize our efforts and accelerate our development and marketing to meet patients' needs.

About Our Medical Devices

Kubota Glass™:
Clinical trials are steadily continuing to evaluate the efficacy of the Kubota Glass technology, aiming to slow the progression of myopia. Our device is extremely low-invasive and can be worn by children as young as six years old. Although only small-scale clinical trials are being conducted, we have obtained very good data compared to existing products. An article was published in Springer Nature's Scientific Reports on July 2022, stating the possibility of treating myopia in adults using active myopic defocus. It still ranks in the top 5% out of all online articles surveyed by the company more than 6 months after its publication. We are very pleased to see that many people show a high level of interest in our technology. By aiming to eliminate myopia from the world, we hope to reduce the number of people who suffer from myopia-related blindness.

PBOS:
We are developing the Patient Based Ophthalmology Suite (PBOS) for a compact optical coherence tomography (OCT) device to remotely monitor retinal lesions. We aim to commercialize this device to enable early detection of retinal diseases by capturing changes in retinal anatomy and monitoring those affected by retinal diseases, and providing optimal ophthalmic treatment for each patient. In 2019, we signed and received a grant from the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) to develop a compact OCT device for NASA's Deep Space missions.

In 2019, we signed and received a grant from the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) to develop a compact OCT device for NASA's Deep Space missions.

About Our Drugs

Emixustat Hydrochloride:
Currently, intraocular injections are mainly used in the treatment of retinal diseases, but there are many patients who are reluctant to undergo treatment due to anxiety about injections into the eye. With emixustat, no intraocular injection is required as it can be taken orally, thereby causing less stress on patients. We concluded the phase 3 clinical study for Stargardt disease. Based on the results of the aggregation and analysis of the database for the clinical study, the primary endpoint and secondary endpoints were not achieved, and there were no significant differences between the treatment groups.

However, as a result of further subsequent analysis, comparing the subject group with a smaller atrophic lesion area at the baseline time against the group that received the placebo, it was demonstrated that the progression of the atrophic lesion was significantly slowed in the group receiving emixustat. The result of this analysis found that the progression rate of macular atrophy in the group receiving emixustat was slowed by 40.8% at Month 24 compared with the placebo group. As it is difficult to conduct a large clinical study ourselves, we plan to continue searching for co-development partners.

We will continue to work together as a team and push forward with our business. I sincerely thank you for your trust and ongoing support towards Kubota Pharmaceutical Group. We will continue to move forward together as a team dedicated to advancing and developing innovative therapeutics and medical technologies to help patients improve their quality of life.

Sincerely,

Ryo Kubota, MD, PhD
Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer
Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings Co., Ltd.
April 2023