At AAO 2026, Oculis CEO Riad Sherif, MD, discusses the genotype-based phase 3 PREDICT-1 trial of licaminlimab, with topline results expected by year-end.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello, I’m Riad Sherif, MD, chief executive officer (CEO) of Oculis. I’m very happy to be here at AAO 2026 at Eyecelerator. Today, we had the pleasure of sharing an update on our pipeline, and we started with licaminlimab, which is being developed for TNFR1-mediated dry eye disease. We’re very pleased, actually, that we won the best presentation.

Licaminlimab is a TNF-α inhibitor and is addressing dry eye disease, which is a huge unmet medical need, as you know. But at the same time, a very small percentage of patients respond to current treatments. And what we did: We have a development approach that is very unique. It’s called genotype-based development, which is genetically driven, where we test patients for a specific TNFR1 genotype. Patients who are positive for this TNFR1 genotype, which involves a genetic variant of the TNF receptor 1, are included in the trial.

Our phase 3 trial, which is called PREDICT-1 andwill read out around year-end, will have approximately two-thirds of patients with the specified TNFR1 genotype. So, we’re very excited for the results, which are coming around year-end.