Aerpio's Tie2 activator fails diabetic retinopathy trial

Aerpio said twice-daily 15 mg subcutaneous AKB-9778 missed the primary endpoint in the Phase IIb TIME-2b trial to treat moderate-to-severe non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy. AKB-9778 is a tyrosine kinase receptor 2 (Tie2) activator.

On the primary endpoint, AKB-9778 failed to significantly improve the percentage of patients with an improvement of two or more steps in the study eye diabetic retinopathy severity score (DRSS) at week 48 vs. placebo (9.6% vs. 3.8%, p=0.27)...