DME: Faricimab remains durable, effective in 2-year results of YOSEMITE and RHINE trials

Video transcript

David Hutton [DH]: I'm David Hutton of Ophthalmology Times. The American Society of Retina Specialists is holding its annual meeting in New York. At the meeting, Dr. David Eichenbaum is presenting, “Durability and safety of faricimab and diabetic macular edema: 2-year results of the Phase 3 YOSEMITE and RHINE trials. Thank you for joining us today. Tell us about your presentation.

David Eichenbaum, MD: Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here and happy to have a talk with you in Ophthalmology Times. So I'm presenting the 2-year results in the diabetic macular edema series for the faricimab molecule, the Yosemite and Rhine trials. These 2-year results are very important because they build on what we learned in the 1-year results and the drug is now commercially available and being used widely, so we want to learn a lot about it.

What we see at the end of the second year, week 96, is that there's remarkable durability in the dosing arm of the trial that allowed for some treatment extend or personalized treatment style dosing like we do in the real world.

At the end of the second year, over 60% of the patients achieved Q 16-week dosing, which is remarkable in diabetic macular edema. And about 80% of the patients achieved Q 12 or longer dosing showing noninferiority in this arm with very long dosing intervals to Q eight-week aflibercept or Q eight week faricimab. So the durability is very impressive, along with noninferior visual acuity results and very good potent drying results.

There's a variety of primary and secondary analyses that showed that the faricimab molecule dosed Q 8-week or per personalized treatment interval achieve remarkable drying, suggesting a better drying ability than aflibercept, which is impressive after two years.

This implies that dual inhibition with anti-angiogenic blockade as well as angiopoietin-2 blockade, which is facilitated by the design of the faricimab molecule, may actually move our standard of care somewhat more in a positive direction for patients by achieving this second target and ambition.

Importantly, through the second year, safety was very comparable between the aflibercept arm and the two faricimab arms and there continued to be no cases of retinal vasculitis or occlusive retinitis in any patients in any arms of this trial. So we have a very safe drug with a suggestion of some better efficacy in diabetic macular edema and remarkable durability.

DH: Excellent. Thank you.

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.