US retinal specialists very receptive to pipeline agents for dry-AMD

5 June 2014

Surveyed US retinal specialists are highly willing to prescribe key emerging therapies for the treatment of geographic atrophy (GA), the dry form of advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

In particular, according to a new report from Decision Resources, clinicians expect to prescribe Roche/Genentech’s lampalizumab and Acucela/Otsuka’s emixustat, two mid-stage compounds, to a median 30% and 50% of their diagnosed GA patients, respectively. Respondents expect the other products queried - GlaxoSmithKline’s GSK-933776, Advanced Cell Technology’s MA09-hRPE cell transplantation and Alimera Sciences/pSivida’s Iluvien/Medidur (sustained-release fluocinolone acetonide) - to capture lower, but nonetheless meaningful, patient shares.

Other key findings from the DecisionBase report, titled What do Physicians and US Payers Expect from the First-to Market Therapies Targeting Geographic Atrophy? include:

End point importance: While effect on GA area progression - an anatomic measure - is the primary end point in both completed and ongoing clinical trials of key emerging therapies, surveyed US and European retinal specialists indicate a greater likely importance of a drug’s demonstrated effect on visual acuity - a familiar clinical metric - in future prescribing decisions for GA.
Delivery as a differentiator: Part-worth utilities derived from a conjoint study reveal that, to surveyed US retinal specialists, the attractiveness of a GA therapy is not heavily influenced by any one specific dosing frequency or unique formulation among a broad range presented. These data correlate with the responses of surveyed US and European retinal specialists, who identify infrequent dosing or convenient delivery as areas of moderate opportunity for therapy differentiation.
The payer perspective: Surveyed US managed care organization pharmacy directors are receptive to reimbursing GA therapies – 75% of surveyed US payers indicated high or very high willingness to grant favorable formulary status to GA therapies demonstrated to maintain visual acuity. Moreover, would-be reimbursers accepted a high yearly cost for emerging therapies demonstrating a reduction in GA area progression. This cost was comparable to that of branded agents used in the treatment of the wet form of advanced AMD.

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