As of now, the first big trial of Eylea in DME is just starting.
The face off between Lucentis and Avastin may well become moot given the pricing of new treatments for wet AMD, such as Eylea.
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In the recently ended third quarter, Eylea captured roughly one-third of the branded market share for wet AMD, according to Regeneron ceo Leonard Schleifer.
Moreover, treatment with Eylea requires fewer patient visits, prompting analysts to predict that Genentech will have to look twice, pun intended, at its strategy.
But the landscape changed a year ago when the FDA approved yet another drug for wet AMD, Eylea, which is sold by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
Given how the remit of payers and regulators has developed in recent years, perhaps the most pertinent of these is the value story that Regeneron has successfully narrated for Eylea.
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Not all of these new drugs came from big pharma as biotech companies like Regeneron (Eylea for wet acute macular degeneration), Vertex (Kalydeco for cystic fibrosis) and Incyte (Jakafi for bone marrow disease) had major drugs approved.
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This morning Robyn Karnauskas, the biotechnology analyst at Deutsche Bank argues that strong sales performance by Lucentis in Europe (where the drug is sold by Novartis, which reported earnings this morning) bode well for Eylea in an eye disease call diabetic macular edema.
Thanks to medicines made by the New England Compounding Center, which led to an outbreak of fungal meningitis that has claimed 33 lives ( look here), there is increased betting that Eylea will capture still more market share, since compounded Avastin is used by ophthalmologists to treat wet AMD.
Late last week, the FDA approved a new med called Eylea, which is made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals ( see this), an upstart with board members that include such heavy hitters as former Merck ceo Roy Vagelos and, as of this morning, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a former executive vp and chief scientific officer at Genentech, who is currently president of Rockefeller University, the medical research institution ( read here).
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