This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Opko Health initiates phase 3 trial of AMD treatment

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Opko Health has initiated a phase 3 COBALT clinical trial evaluating whether bevasiranib administered every 8 or 12 weeks is as effective as Lucentis (ranibizumab, Genentech), which is administered every 4 weeks, for preventing vision loss associated with wet age-related macular degeneration, the company announced in a press release.

Bevasiranib is a small interfering RNA drug that silences the genes that produce VEGF, believed to be largely responsible for vision loss from wet AMD.

The multinational study will include more than 330 wet AMD patients and involves the first therapy based on RNA interference technology to advance to phase 3 clinical trials, the release said.

"Currently, patients with wet AMD undergo intravitreal injections every 4 weeks to achieve the vision-preserving benefits of Lucentis, so the potential ability of bevasiranib to achieve similar results while requiring less frequent injections would be an important benefit for these patients who often have limited mobility," said Philip Frost, MD, chairman and CEO of Opko Health, in the release.