Emerging therapies for neovascular age-related macular degeneration: drugs in the pipeline

Topic: Discuss the emerging therapies that could improve the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Clinical relevance: Current antiangiogenic therapies require frequent injections, and not all patients respond to these therapies. Thus, there is a need to identify additional therapies that could improve the treatment of neovascular AMD.

Methods: Review of medical literature and ongoing clinical trials as well as their results in the area of neovascular AMD treatment.

Results: There are numerous areas of investigation into new treatment for AMD, including the newly approved aflibercept eye; sustained-release compounds that may allow for fewer injections, combination therapy with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy and ionizing radiation, and investigational drugs that address different targets along the angiogenic signaling cascade, or other pathways related to the pathophysiology of neovascular AMD altogether.

Conclusions: Despite the outstanding advances made in the treatment of neovascular AMD with anti-VEGF therapies, patients still require numerous injections and office visits. Future therapies, however, have the potential not only to reduce patient visits and injections, but also to improve outcomes by targeting additional pathways, increasing target affinity, and lengthening treatment durability.