Most medicines are blunt instruments. To reach one small target - say, the light-sensing cells at the back of the eye - a pill has to flood the whole body, and an injection wears off in weeks. Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, founded in Cumberland, Rhode Island in 2000, spent a quarter century asking a narrower question: what if the medicine simply lived where it was needed?
The answer is Encapsulated Cell Technology (ECT). Neurotech takes human cells, genetically engineers them to secrete a chosen therapeutic protein, and seals them inside a semipermeable hollow-fiber capsule roughly the size of a grain of rice. Implanted in the eye, the capsule lets oxygen and nutrients flow in and the protein flow out, while keeping the immune system from attacking the cells inside. The result is a small, self-sustaining source of medicine that keeps working for years from a single procedure.
In March 2025, that idea stopped being experimental. The FDA approved ENCELTO (revakinagene taroretcel-lwey) - the clinical candidate long known as NT-501, or Renexus - as the first and only treatment for macular telangiectasia type 2 (MacTel), a rare, progressive retinal disease that until then had no approved therapy at all.
The ECT platform allows for the long-term, sustained delivery of therapeutic factors to the back of the eye.
- Neurotech, on its Encapsulated Cell Technology
