New AMD Drug will Require Less Frequent Injections
December 2, 2010 - VEGF Trap-Eye is a new drug being developed by Bayer Healthcare and their partners Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. to prevent and control the wet form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This drug is in the same class as Lucentis and other currently available anti-VEGF agents used for the treatment of wet AMD.
These companies have just released information from a large clinical trial comparing VEGF Trap-Eye to the established wet AMD treatment, Lucentis. This trial, known as VIEW-1 included over 1200 people and was conducted in centres across the United States and in a dozen Canadian sites. The trial compared monthly scheduled doses of Lucentis to monthly or bi-monthly doses of VEGF Trap-Eye. A second large trial known as VIEW-2 compared these products in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
“A critical goal of these studies was to demonstrate that VEGF Trap-Eye could achieve robust improvements in vision and maintain them over time with a more convenient every other-month dose,” says Dr. Jeffrey Heier, a Boston-based ophthalmologist who chaired the steering committee for the VIEW-1 trial.
Early data from the first year of these trials has indeed shown similar outcomes for people taking VEGF Trap-Eye every other month compared to monthly Lucentis. In both cases about 95% of people were able to prevent the rapid vision loss associated with wet AMD. Monthly doses of VEGF Trap-Eye were actually slightly more effective at helping to restore lost sight. You can see more details of this study on the Bayer website.
Bayer also plans to study the use of VEGF Trap-Eye for other macular edemas. They anticipate that trials of VEGF Trap-Eye for diabetic macular edema (DME) will begin in late 2011 in Canada and the USA.
Bayer Healthcare and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals plan to seek approval for this new treatment in the United States in the first half of 2011. There is, as of yet, no information available about their plan to launch this drug in Canada.
Learn more about research on new treatments for dry and wet age-related macular degeneration in our online AMD information centre.