Eyeworld

EW MEETING REPORTER 80 December 2017 Reporting from OIS@AAO 2017, November 9, New Orleans Dry eye is becoming exponen- tially covered in the ophthalmic space, but Robert Dempsey, Shire (Lexington, Massachusetts), said his company is still looking at avenues in the dry eye market, despite al- ready having an FDA-approved drop. "There is still significant unmet need," he said. Dr. Sauer said there is room for multiple therapies in dry eye, and Jane Rady, Johnson & Johnson Vi- sion (Santa Ana, California), which recently completed the acquisition of TearScience (Morrisville, North Carolina), agreed, saying that one product or one device is not the total answer for dry eye. Panelists also discussed the MIGS market, medical glaucoma therapy, and gene therapy programs. OIS industry tribute The industry award presentation featured a tribute to Abbott Medical Optics (AMO, now Johnson & John- son Vision), titled "Growth Through Metamorphosis: The Story of AMO." Following a timeline of AMO over the years, William Link, PhD, San Francisco, Jim Mazzo, Dublin, California, and Tom Frinzi, Orange County, California, discussed their experiences with the company. The company's innovation in ophthalmology began four decades ago. AMO was founded in 1976 as a pioneer in early development of IOLs for cataract patients. During the 1980s, it was known for intro- ducing a number of firsts in IOL technologies: the first specular microscope, the first U.S.-made YAG laser, and the first-generation phacoemulsification system. The company was acquired by Allergan (Dublin, Ireland) in 1986 and changed its name to Allergan Medical Optics. This was followed by the introduction of the Array IOL in 1997 (the first multifocal lens Dirk Sauer, PhD, Novartis (Ba- sel, Switzerland), also weighed in on the topic, saying that he is skeptical about combination treatments that try to get more visual acuity out of patients. "I would go after treat- ments that work on the lesion itself, get rid of the lesion, or make the lesion smaller. I would also try to intervene very early," Dr. Sauer said. With regard to dry AMD and com- plement inhibitors, which Dr. Cun- ningham noted have seen failures in recent clinical trials, Dr. Ehrlich said he thinks complement inhib- itors should still be researched. Dr. Ehrlich defended lesion growth as a meaningful endpoint measurement. Naveed Shams, MD, Santen Pharmaceuticals (Osaka, Japan), said this area of research is lacking good, validated quality of life instruments. He said this is an area where aca- demia and industry could collabo- rate to create another metric that he thinks could be important from a reimbursement standpoint. F ollowing more than 30 com- pany presentations, a panel discussed current trends and how the showcased compa- nies fit into the current state of ophthalmic innovation. Wet and dry AMD were topics of discussion among the panelists with moderator Emmett Cunningham Jr., MD, Clarus Funds (San Francis- co), directing the questions. From a wet AMD perspective, Jason Eh- rlich, MD, Genentech (San Francis- co), said he thinks the biggest chal- lenge for physicians and patients is that the real world outcomes of therapies are not close to those seen in the clinical trials. He would like to see therapies meet similar out- comes to those in the trials in the short term. In the longer term, he would like to see a disease-modify- ing therapy, which is defined as one that would have a limited number of treatments that would stop the disease process from occurring vs. a chronic need for treatment. Reporting from OIS@AAO 2017 Mr. Frinzi, Dr. Link, and Mr. Mazzo shared their experiences with AMO during an industry award presentation. Source: Healthegy

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