Priya Vakharia, MD, speaks with Ophthalmology 360 about new treatments in clinical trials that could impact future treatment standards for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Priya Vakharia, MD:
My name is Priya Vakharia. I work at Retina Vitreous Associates of Florida in Tampa, Florida. I’m part of a retina-only practice here in the Sunshine State and excited to be here today.
There are therapies that are currently in development for wet AMD, and these are really exciting because these therapies may help to decrease treatment burden for our patients. As you know, we have a lot of retina patients who keep coming in monthly or every other month for their injections, and our clinics are getting busier. Also patients just don’t want to come as frequently. Patients rightfully so want to have a little bit more flexibility between their appointments. We currently have 2 big categories that are in development. One is tyrosine kinase inhibitors. There’s 2 big companies that are currently investigating these products in phase 3 trials.
The first is EyePoint, who’s investigating a tyrosine kinase inhibitor in the LUGANO and LUCIA trials. That tyrosine kinase inhibitor basically is in a trial compared to a traditional aflibercept control. Potentially that product could last up to 6 months with 6-month re-dosing, which would be really exciting.
There is also another tyrosine kinase inhibitor in development by Ocular Therapeutix. Also, those are 2 trials, the SOL-1 and the SOL-R trial. Those trials are very different designs, but against an aflibercept control. Again, different trial design in that trial. Again, the tyrosine kinase inhibitors have the potential to last up to 6 months or longer. That would really be really meaningful for our patients and would really change how we approach clinic and how we bring these patients back and how we treat them.
The other 2 really exciting products that are in phase 3 trials are gene therapy. These are single injections of a medication that encodes an aflibercept-like protein, which controls wet macular degeneration with, in theory, a single injection.
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that that would be very exciting for patients to get a single injection. I think we’ll have to see how these pan out. Obviously, safety is the most important thing, but if approved, not only would this change the way that we manage wet macular degeneration, but it would really change our retina clinics. We just wouldn’t have the frequent injection patients as often. Obviously, it’s all going to boil down to whether these products get approved, how well they actually work, how much they actually reduce treatment burden, and then of course, can patients even afford them?
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