VIDEO: Potentially practice-changing treatments in geographic atrophy

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So at the end of February of 2023, there are a couple of treatment options that are likely to be players in the geographic atrophy space. We’re very fortunate now to have an FDA-approved treatment, which is pegcetacoplan, also known as Syfovre (Apellis Pharmaceuticals). And probably closest to the finish line is another medication called Zimura (avacincaptad pegol, Iveric Bio) and will understand if the FDA provides an approval for that properly by the end of this year. There’s a whole host of other drugs that are available probably in the phase 2 level or earlier, but right now it’s probably most interesting to talk a little bit about pegcetacoplan. And this is a drug that’s administered in a volume that’s about 100 µL, so considerably larger, double amount the amount that we normally do in intravitreal injection. And you can administer it either every month or every other month. And the therapeutic benefit is really just in slowing the progression of geographic atrophy with an anatomic benefit at 2 years. As interestingly, even after 2 years, there is no functional benefit to this drug. And so I think what we’re really gonna be interested in seeing over the next few years is as that sort of those curves start to differentiate from one another, is there a corresponding functional benefit for this drug? This is a interesting thing that, you know, that pegcetacoplan is where Syfovre released at a very high price point. You know, it was like $2,190 or something for the injection. So it creates a kind of a big economic, you know, we’re in a zero-sum game in American health care, and one of the difficulties of this drug is the cost, and the cost especially upfront where you have to sort of commit to a couple of years of potential treatment without perceiving any benefit. And so I think having honest conversations with patients and then with other docs is gonna be really important to kind of figure out like what’s the right patient population.