VIDEO: Treatment advancements in wet AMD

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.

We really are at an exciting time in our management for macular generation in that we do have some very recently approved therapies that have been FDA approved and are now available to us as clinicians in the treatment of exudative macular degeneration. Two specifically, one is the faricimab molecule, VABYSMO, and the results of the phase III clinical trials, the TENAYA and LUCERNE studies, did find very favorable results in that molecule, which is the first to target both VEGF as well as ang-2, has been found to be non-inferior to aflibercept in their clinical trials. And up to about almost 80% of patients were able to be extended to a 12- to 16-week interval. So this is really exciting in that we have yet another agent that we can use in sort of our armamentarium to treat patients with exudative macular degeneration with non-inferior visual acuity results but does allow us to extend our interval of treatment up to 12 to 16 weeks, so affording us more durability. So that is exciting because it allows us to extend the interval between treatments, less treatment burden to the patients as well as to the clinicians. The second agent that I think also has been exciting to us and also adds to our armamentarium of therapies is the port delivery system which was studied in the LADDER and ARCHWAY studies. And this is the first FDA-approved surgically implanted device for treatment for exudative macular degeneration and similarly was found to be non-inferior to monthly anti-VEGF injections and allowing for the refilling of the implant at twice-a-year intervals. So again significantly reducing the frequency of clinical visits and treatment burden to the patients. So, you know, in the right patient this could also be another option. So it just adds to the current body of drugs that we have available to us in the treatment of exudative AMD. Moving to non-exudative AMD, this, I would say, is kind of the largest unmet need in in the retina is in the geographic atrophy population of patients. And we do have some positive results with the DERBY and OAKS studies. One of the studies did find positive results in terms of reducing the rate of geographic atrophy progression. So that is on the horizon.