Angiogenesis 2024: Highlighting 72-week results from the BALATON and COMINO Phase 3 studies of faricimab in retinal vein occlusion

Dr Ramin Tadayoni sat down with Ophthalmology Times Europe for an update on faricimab in RVO 72-week results from the BALATON and COMINO phase 3 studies at the virtual Angiogenesis, Exudation and Degeneration 2024 conference. He shares some of the highlights here with Group Editorial Director Sheryl Stevenson.

Video Transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Sheryl Stevenson: We are joined today by Dr Ramin Tadayoni, who is among the faculty at this year's Angiogenesis conference. Welcome to you! So excited to learn more about the long-term data from BRVO and CRVO from the phase 3 faricimab program. What can you tell us about the highlights of this data?

Ramin Tadayoni, MD, PhD: Thank you very much for having me. It's a real pleasure and it's also an honor to present for the first time the results of BALATON and COMINO, which are two phase 3 studies about faricimab, respectively, in branch retinal vein occlusion [BRVO] and central retinal vein occlusion [CRVO].

Last year, I presented the results for 6 months that compared faricimab to aflibercept, both of them monthly injection for 6 months and showed that with faricimab as with aflibercept it was possible to have a very good result with a very good gain of vision around 16 letters of vision, and faricimab was noninferior in visual acuity in this part of the study which was the primary endpoint. The benefit that was available at that time was that with faricimab, there was less leakage on FA [fluorescein angiography] compared to aflibercept.

Since [then] there has been one more year and we have more data on this extra year. During this extra year, all the patient have faricimab. So we have a group of patient having faricimab since the beginning, and the group of patient who had 6 months of aflibercept then switched to faricimab. And in the result I present at Angiogenesis, we see that in both groups, so all of them having faricimab, there is also a robust stability of vision so the vision didn't decrease despite the fact that the interval of injection was increased because it was a two-time extend regimen and modify treat and extend regimen and despite the fact that patient had only around five injections during this period.

The anatomic results are also very satisfactory—no change, no increase of thickness, the gain was staying here. And also in terms of safety, no new signal or anything. So to make it short, in this part of this study, this phase 3 study, the solid gain of vision that was obtained during the 6 months was maintained with faricimab treat and extend with most of the patients having an interval of q12 or more in between injections. That's a big benefit and faricimab was...so now we have this faricimab, which is approved in US so US colleagues can happily use it, and we expect approval in other parts of the world coming, hopefully, soon to be able to treat our patient also with this new drug.

Stevenson: Wonderful. Any other data or anything for the research that you might want to consider in the future for this?

Tadayoni: So I'm sure that we will try to see how much we can increase the interval in this patient because here there was a limitation. And probably we were able to increase more or stopping some patient and to see how we can take the extra benefit from this stability of vessels and decrease of leakage in the long run and compare visual acuity. There will be a lot of things. Each time we answer one question, there's 10 questions coming right after.