Plotting a challenge to Regeneron’s blockbuster Eylea, Ocular Therapeutix has hired “a key architect” of its rival’s launch to head its commercial team.
David Robinson has joined Ocular as global chief commercial officer, the company announced this week. Before taking up the post, Robinson worked as chief marketing officer for global ophthalmology at Merck & Co. starting in the spring of 2025. That stint gave the marketing executive a lead role in Merck’s preparations to launch assets it acquired in 2024 through its $3 billion buyout of Eyebiotech.
While Ocular noted Robinson’s time at Merck, it gave more prominence in the announcement to his earlier spell at Regeneron. Across nearly seven years, Robinson worked in sales, marketing, field access and reimbursement at Regeneron. In those capacities, the executive developed and executed the strategic plan to launch Eylea, according to Ocular.
Meanwhile, before joining Regeneron, Robinson racked up plenty more commercialization experience at UCB, MedImmune and GSK after beginning his pharma career in the mid-1980s.
At Ocular, Robinson will lead efforts to unseat the drug he helped launch at Regeneron. Eylea and its high-dose sibling Eylea HD are among the top treatments for wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) and diabetic retinopathy, the two lead indications for Ocular’s Axpaxli.
Hiring Robinson expands the team Pravin Dugel, M.D., has put together since becoming Ocular CEO in 2024. Steve Meyers joined Ocular as chief commercial officer shortly before Dugel arrived and will continue in his role and work with Robinson on the Axpaxli launch.
Even before adding Robinson to the mix, Dugel was publicly confident that Ocular had ample expertise to launch Axpaxli.
“We’re very well capitalized to commercialize this product ourselves. We certainly have more expertise in retina than any other company per capita on the planet. So, I don't think there's any need whatsoever at this point for partnership or licensing opportunities. We're very well set up to go ahead and do this by ourselves,” Dugel said at a Jefferies event in November.
Ocular expects to publish phase 3 data in wet AMD in the first quarter of 2026 and file for approval shortly after posting the results. The readout will show how Axpaxli compares to low-dose Eylea. In the study, patients received a single injection of Axpaxli or Eylea. Over the next 36 weeks, Ocular tracked patients and gave rescue Eylea doses to patients whose vision deteriorated a certain amount.
The goal is to obtain a superiority label for Axpaxli. Achieving that would set the drug apart from a pack of wet AMD products that includes Regeneron’s products and Roche’s Vabysmo. While the current therapies are given every four months, at best, patients on Axpaxli could go six months between doses.
A second phase 3 trial is comparing Axpaxli to Eylea and Eylea HD, and data from that trial are due in 2027.