Singapore: Novartis revealed new clinical data associated with the eye drug Lucentis (ranibizumab) admist a total of 209 abstracts from other organizations at the 2013 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeting in the US.

The research across multiple retinal disease areas, including wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic macular edema (DME), retinal vein occlusion (RVO) and myopic choroidal neovascularization (CNV), demonstrates that Lucentis is a pioneering anti-VEGF ocular treatment with its transformational efficacy, individualized treatment regimen, and well established long-term safety profile.

Lucentis is a humanized therapeutic antibody fragment designed to block all biologically active forms of vascular endothelial cell growth factor-A (VEGF-A). Increased levels of VEGF-A are seen in wet AMD and other ocular diseases such as diabetic macular edema (DME) and retinal vein occlusion (RVO). Lucentis was specifically designed for the eye, minimizing systemic exposure.

"Lucentis was designed to save sight and this is further demonstrated by the wealth of data in multiple disease areas reported at ARVO this week. In patients with myopic CNV average VA gains were 14 letters with an average of 3.6 injections," said Dr Timothy Wright, global head development, Novartis Pharma. "Real world evidence shows a lower number of injections and clinic visits than in the original studies with Lucentis, whilst achieving an over 50 percent reduction of blindness due to wet AMD."