Treatment May Prevent Recurrence of Wet AMD

The latest therapies for wet age-related macular degeneration — treatments such as Lucentis™ and Macugen® — are administered every four to six weeks to stop hemorrhaging underneath the retina that causes sudden and signifi can't vision loss. While these therapies are often effective, the bleeding usually returns after the treatments are stopped, and the patient must be retreated.

An emerging treatment called bevasiranib from Opko Health shows promise in preventing recurrent hemorrhaging and is now being tested in a Phase III clinical study. Opko’s COBALT trial will evaluate whether bevasiranib, as a follow-up therapy to Lucentis, effectively stops recurrent bleeding under the retina.

The biggest potential benefit of bevasiranib is that it may only need to be administered every eight or 12 weeks to be effective — much less frequently than the other treatments. Both bevasiranib and Lucentis are administered by injections into the eye.

In the COBALT study, all participants will initially receive three monthly injections of Lucentis to clear up their existing wet AMD. After this initial treatment, certain participants will receive bevasiranib either every eight or 12 weeks. The other participants will continue to be treated monthly with Lucentis. The investigators will determine if follow-up treatment with bevasiranib is at least as effective as continuing treatment with Lucentis.

Bevasiranib works by halting the production of a protein known as Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) that causes the hemorrhaging associated with wet AMD. The treatment uses a mechanism known as RNA interference to silence the gene that initiates the production of VEGF.

Bevasiranib will not clear up the VEGF that’s already been produced nor will it replace treatments such as Lucentis that are effective in “mopping up” the bleeding that’s already occurred. However, bevasiranib looks promising in preventing recurrence of wet AMD, and doing so with a minimum of treatments.

For more information on the bevasiranib clinical trial, visit www.clinicaltrials.gov and search on bevasiranib.