VIDEO: Emerging therapies for diabetic eye disease

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

So there are a number of treatments in the pipeline that have recently been approved or emerging and are potentially promising for the treatment of diabetic eye disease. Genentech has had two treatment modalities approved.

One is Susvimo, which is otherwise known as the port delivery system, which is a continuous delivery of ranibizumab, an anti-VEGF medicine. And this is a high-dose version in a especially formulated solution of a drug that's been around now for about 15 years but is currently given every one or every two months in injection. The advantage of this delivery system is it's a reservoir that is surgically implanted and then this reservoir can be periodically refilled, you know, either every six months or potentially every year to allow continuous delivery of ranibizumab drug to the eye. And in the clinical trials, this has actually been approved for wet macular degeneration, but it's anticipated that we'll have the approval for diabetic macular edema and diabetic eye disease shortly.

Recently, faricimab, which is a bispecific biologic therapy, which is a specially engineered antibody that will bind VEGF on one portion and then the other portion binds angiopoietin-2. This is actually hitting two different targets. So this is actually the first therapy in the past 15 years or so, or 10 to 15 years I should say, that's offered a additional mechanism of action. So the advantage of this potential therapy is that you're targeting not only VEGF, which is a well-known target for diabetic eye disease, but also targeting a novel molecule angiopoietin-2. And the thought is that the combined approach of targeting both of these modies can offer patients the benefit of improved vision outcomes and potentially less treatment burden with fewer treatments needed. So perhaps earlier control of the disease and then subsequently less frequent treatment.

Additionally, there's a couple other therapeutic modalities in the pipeline. So gene therapies, so these are genetic therapies that are are being administered to produce a therapeutic protein targeting VEGF. REGENXBIO, who's working on this in collaboration with Clearside. There's several other companies that are working on novel, small molecule inhibitors. Some of them are targeting VEGF receptor tyrosine kinase and then there's a few other novel targets that are being looked at as well. So the next generation of therapies is very promising to try to improve not only treatment burden for patients, but also potentially vision outcomes as well.