VIDEO: Recent developments in DME treatment

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We have a lot of new things coming up in the treatment for diabetic macular edema. We have been doing intravitreal injections for now more than two decades, and now we have newer injections which are pretty much supporting us for a much longer time period. So, we are able to extend the treatment duration so our patients don't have to come for more frequent visits. In addition to the newer intravitreal injections, we have some other very interesting clinical trials going on. One of the clinical trial which I'm particularly interested in is by Oculis. They are exploring the use of eyedrops in diabetic macular edema. So, they have just reported their short-term outcomes, and it looks very promising. So, we have yet to look into the long-term outcome of these eyedrops for diabetic macular edema. There are a couple of trials going on for the gene therapy as well. There was one trial by Adverum (Adverum Biotechnologies, Inc.) on diabetic macular edema, particularly for gene therapy. Unfortunately, because of the side effects, that trial needed to be closed much earlier than planned. However, some of the newer gene therapy studies, including from RGX-314, that is REGENXBIO, a company which is also working with wet AMD. I'm involved with their wet AMD trial. They're also exploring the suprachoroidal gene therapy for diabetic retinopathy, and the early results are very promising, so I'm pretty sure that it will also be applicable for diabetic macular edema, but we have yet to learn about this. So, there is lots coming up for our patients with diabetic macular edema. And I think the newer lasers are also in the horizon, particularly the subthreshold laser. Now the techniques are improving, and we are hoping that those lasers will also be useful, at least as an adjuvant therapy for our patients.