Trying to Trap Lucentis

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and partner Bayer AG have been developing VEGF Trap-Eye aflibercept to treat wet age-related macular degeneration in the hopes of providing improved efficacy and reduced dosing frequency over market leader Lucentis ranibizumab from Genentech Inc. and Novartis AG. But doctors are already dosing Lucentis less frequently than the monthly dosing recommended on its label and believe that new anti-VEGF treatments in wet AMD will need to show marked improvement over Lucentis in both efficacy and dosing to take market share.

Last week, Regeneron released 52-week follow-up data from the double-blind Phase II CLEAR-IT 2 trial in 157 patients. Participants received four monthly doses of 0.5 mg or 2 mg VEGF Trap for 12 weeks and were treated as-needed thereafter, based on monthly physician visits to monitor retinal thickness, vision loss, persistent fluid or new vascularization. The 0.5 and 2 mg groups had improvements in visual acuity of 5.4 and 9 letters, respectively...