Morrisville's TearScience moving to larger space at Perimeter Park

Morrisville medical device company TearScience, which raised $44.5 million last year, has signed a lease for roughly 20,000 square feet in a Duke Realty building in Perimeter Park.

The company expects to relocate sometime this summer, CEO Tim Willis said today.

Willis said the company had planned to take additional space at its current location, 1101 Aviation Parkway, but other surrounding tenants extended their leases last year when TearScience was still unsure whether it would land additional funding.

TearScience's $44.5 million was the most venture capital raised by a Triangle firm in 2010.

The company, which focuses on devices for diagnosing and treating dry eye disease, employs about 25 people.

The company is delaying adding more employees until it gets word from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is reviewing TearScience's application for the LipiFlow Thermal Pulsation System.

The LipiFlow device is designed to treat a condition called evaporative dry eye, which stems from a deficiency of the oily lipid layer that prevents tears from evaporating.

"We're holding off now until we get FDA clearance," Willis said.

The FDA has already approved the company's diagnostic device, which takes optical measurements of the eye to diagnose whether a person has evaporative dry eye, the most common type of chronic dry eye disease.

Its devices have also been approved by regulators in Europe and Canada.