The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Hi, welcome to the Retinal Physician video channel. I'm Diana V. Do, MD, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with David Brown, MD, FACS, from Retina Consultants of America. David, thanks for coming to the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting. Tell us about your exciting talk at the retina subspecialty day.

Dr. Brown: Thanks a lot. It really is exciting, because it's something we do every day. Every day, we give povidone-iodine (Betadine; Purdue Pharma) to patients and about a third of them are fine with it, and about a third of them tolerate it, and about a third of them hate it. And is there another option?

Dr. Do: Yes, you're talking about a new potential agent we could use on the topical surface, IRX-101 (iRenix Medical), and the early data seems very promising.

Dr. Brown: It actually does. So its chlorine dioxide, which is an aqueous solution that’s actually prepared—2 things that come together to make the active ingredient. The interesting thing was in the preclinical data against Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus, it’s much more effective at killing bacteria than Betadine. And amazingly, in their clinical trials, it was way more tolerated. Patients didn’t burn like crazy, and we'll see.

Dr. Do: That's exciting. Let us know, what are the future plans? If the study continues to be positive, will there be availability of this in clinical practice?

Dr. Brown: The company and developers are committed to getting this out to a broad portion of the population. We’ve certainly seen a lot of products that come out at millions of dollars a dose; we're certainly hoping they don't do that, we’re hoping they make it affordable and accessible. But I think that's yet to be determined how it will be commercialized.

Dr. Do: Thank you very much for sharing that information.

Dr. Brown: My pleasure. RP