David Boyer, MD, on Potential Advantages of Suprachoroidal Gene Therapy for Neovascular AMD
The senior partner at Retina Vitreous Associates Medical Group discussed new findings from the AAVIATE study of RGX-314.
“The largest unmet need is the ability to reduce the injections for the patients... Reducing the treatment burden to the physician, the patient, and their caregivers, is a very, very important aspect of our treatment. In addition, by reducing the number of injections, we hopefully will get better compliance, with patients coming in, say, every 4 months, 6 months, or even longer than that, but have a better chance of maintaining their vision.”
Suprachoroidal delivery of RGX-314 (REGENXBIO) gene therapy had a favorable safety profile with some evidence of a dose-dependent response in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) treated in the phase 2 AAVIATE trial (NCT04514653). No serious adverse events related to the treatment were observed and the highest reduction in treatment burden was seen in cohort 3, in which patients received the highest dose of RGX-314, and had an 85% reduction in annualized injection rate and 67% were injection-free. Along with the use of prophylactic topical steroids, there were no cases of intraocular inflammation in cohort 3.
The new data were presented at the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) 2023 Annual Meeting, held July 29-August 1 in Seattle, Washington, by David Boyer, MD, senior partner, Retina Vitreous Associates Medical Group. CGTLive spoke with Boyer to learn more about the current unmet needs in the treatment landscape for nAMD and how RGX-314 gene therapy could potentially adress these. He also touched on the benefits of suprachoroidal delivery in this setting.
