Regeneron and Bayer report follow-up eye drug data

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. - Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Bayer HealthCare AG said Tuesday their drug candidate VEGF Trap-Eye continued to benefit patients with macular degeneration, which can lead to blindness, after one year of use in a clinical trial. After 52 weeks of dosing in a midstage trial, patients had decreased retinal thickness and improved vision in the eye that was treated with VEGF Trap-Eye. The patients had wet macular degeneration, a condition that causes central vision to deteriorate because of a hardening of the arteries that feed the retina. About 10 percent of all macular degeneration patients have wet macular degeneration, in which new blood vessels develop under the retina, but frequently break, causing bleeding. Wet macular degeneration generally causes more severe vision loss than the dry form. The ailment... [read full story]