Going head-to-head with Eylea, Roche touts PhIII win for bispecific blockbuster contender in diabetic macular edema
Roche had its sights set on Eylea — the blockbuster eye drug that essentially made Regeneron — early in the development program for the bispecific antibody faricimab, which targets both the VEGF-A pathway and angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2).
Now, the pharma giant’s subsidiary Genentech says faricimab has cleared two Phase III studies for diabetic macular edema, where it went head-to-head with Eylea.
The key metric across the YOSEMITE and RHINE trials was non-inferior visual acuity gains, and several dosing regimens of faricimab were compared against the standard Eylea treatment, given every eight weeks. Whether patients took faricimab every eight weeks or at personalized dosing intervals up to 16 weeks, the drug proved non-inferior.
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