Hawaiian Eye: Real world use of faricimab in the IRIS Registry

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Hutton, Ophthalmology Times®: Hi. I'm David Hutton of Ophthalmology Times®

. Joining me today is Dr. Ferhina S. Ali, who will be presenting “Real World Use of Faricimab in the IRIS Registry” at Hawaiian Eye. Thank you for joining us today. Tell us about your presentation.

Ferhina S. Ali, MD, MPH: Hi, David, thanks so much for having me. So I'm excited to be sharing these results in Hawaii next week. This is a two-part study titled For Retina AMD and For Retina DME. And we use the IRIS Registry in collaboration with Verana Health to investigate the use of faricimab in the real world for the treatment of neovascular AMD and diabetic macular edema.

So this is the largest cohort that has been identified to date receiving treatment for faricimab. Over 17,000 eyes received faricimab; 12,000 of those had been treated for neovascular AMD and the remainder are being treated for diabetic macular edema. We saw that the majority of these patients had received a prior anti-VEGF treatment within the last one to two months prior to their first injection of faricimab. And sort of related to that, these patients presented with pretty good vision of 20/40 or better on average.

In terms of how we identify treatment patterns, we identified monthly treatment as receiving treatment less than six weeks following the prior injection, or a form of extended treatment if the following injection was greater than or equal to six weeks following the prior. We saw also that a majority of patients had undergone some form some form of extension of their treatment prior to completing the four initial doses, and most of those have received extension within the first one to two injections.

Now, in terms of vision, for those that had received prior treatment, we saw that they had maintained stability of their vision over the course of the four directions. And for those that were treatment naive, there was steady improvement in their vision over the course of those injections as well.

DH: What's the next step for your research?

Dr. Ali: I think that for now, we have just only scratched the surface to identify the treatment patterns for these patients. And we only have very preliminary data on the visual response. So I think that we're going to continue to investigate trends in their vision over time. We're going to continue to investigate the frequency of their injections, the average number of treatments that patients are receiving and how that correlates to their visual outcomes.

DH: Again, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Have a great trip next week and stay safe.

Dr. Ali: Thank you so much.