Event Scoreboard --
(a) Lucentis does WELL in RVO trials
---------------------------------------------
BRAVO (FVF4165g)
-- 55% (0.3 mg) > 15 letters
-- 61% (0.5 mg) > 15 letters
CRUISE (FVF4166g)
-- 46% (0.3 mg) > 15 letters
-- 48% (0.5 mg) > 15 letters
Message 25993065
Message 25992985
SurModics + (Genentech + Lucentis)
-----------------------------------------
Investors were revved up Tuesday about SurModics Inc.'s deal granting rights to its biodegradable microparticles drug delivery system to Genentech Inc. for use in developing and commercializing a sustained formulation of Lucentis (ranibizumab injection), a vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitor approved to treat wet age-related macular degeneration
Message 25999555
(b) Medicare REDUCES payments for Avastin used for DME
to $7.20 per injection.
---------------------------------------------
Lucentis (ranibizumab) = $2,000 an injection
Avastin (bevacizumab) = $50 an injection
Avastin medicare payment reduced to $7.20
Message 25995760
Lucentis:
-----------------
Ranibizumab has a 5- to 20-fold higher
binding affinity than bevacizumab
ranibizumab has greater biological activity on day 0 than bevacizumab
For a dose of Lucentis, Medicare reimburses doctors $2,039.
Doctors pay just under $2,000 for a dose of Lucentis, Rosenfeld said.
Both Lucentis and Avastin were developed by Genentech, now owned by Roche. U.S. sales of Lucentis were over $550 million in the first half of this year, Roche reported. Because the drug is primarily used by the elderly, much of that is paid for by Medicare.
== $1.2 BILLION if annualized
Message 25995781
Avastin:
-----------------
bevacizumab has a longer half-life than ranibizumab
Avastin Study Patients Develop Congestive Heart Failure, Enrollment Suspended
Message 25995805
the specialty pharmacy chain The Apothecary Shops
repackages Avastin for use in the eye and sells it to doctors for $27 per dose, John Musil, the company’s CEO, told the Health Blog.
Message 25995781
VEGF Trap-Eye (Regeneron and Bayer)
-------------------------------------------
may convey even greater affinity and result in 450 times the amount of biological activity at the end of 1 month than either bevacizumab or ranibizumab.
Message 25995760
Message 25995791
Triamcinolone + Avastin
--------------------------------------
Adding the intravitreal steroid triamcinolone to monotherapy bevacizumab, or to a combination therapy consisting of bevacizumab plus low-dose photodynamic therapy (rPDT)
does not provide any added benefit in visual outcomes for patients with age-related macular degeneration
Message 25996459
(Pegaptanib + PDT) vs Avastin
------------------------------------
Bevacizumab Injections Superior to Pegaptanib, Photodynamic Therapy for Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration
A small trial has shown that intravitreal injections of bevacizumab given every 6 weeks followed by as-needed re-treatments is superior to either injections of pegaptanib, photodynamic therapy (PDT), or sham treatments in the management of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Message 25996455
INDIA
------------
Estimates suggest that
79.4 million Indians will be affected by diabetes by 2030, of which approximately 20% could lose their vision
Furthermore, a diabetic is 25% more likely to go blind than a non-diabetic.
Given these numbers, the potential for diabetic retinopathy -- a disease affecting the blood vessels of retina thereby causing blindness, seems to be very high.
Message 25995812
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