Concluding Thoughts on Elamipretide in Dry AMD Patients with GA

In this HCPLive® Clinical Trial Spotlight, Arshad Khanani, MD breaks down the investigational product candidate, elamipretide, and the Phase 2 ReCLAIM-2 clinical trial, for the treatment of geographic atrophy (GA) in dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Khanani is the director of clinical research at Sierra Eye Associates and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. He serves as an investigator in the Elamipretide clinical trial program.

Each segment features Khanani breaking down the ophthalmic pipeline for GA, elamipretide’s mechanism of action, primary results from the ReCLAIM-2 clinical trial, what role it could play in treatment, and the recently announced Phase 3 clinical trial program.

Khanani: As a busy clinician, I'm excited to use the currently available treatment options for our patients with GA, because we haven't had any treatments. But, we know that the current treatments have modest efficacy. We have not seen a functional benefit, and there is a significant treatment burden associated with intravital injections given for GA every month or every other month.

As we know this is a bilateral disease in most cases, many of these patients who drive themselves to our clinic, have to come in and get one injection and then come back for another injection, or get both injections at the same time. This is a significant burden on patients as well as their caregivers.

I'm excited at the potential of having systemic treatment for dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and GA. Elamipretide’s mechanism of action, [based on] data from the ReCLAIM-1 and ReCLAIM-2 studies, is promising.

I’m excited that the Phase 3 ReNEW and ReCLAIN studies have started and I’m looking forward to participating in the Phase 3 program. Hopefully, we can have a systemic treatment available for our patients in the near future that can address disease early, help treat both eyes and have some vision function benefit for our patients.

It is an exciting time in our field for patients with dry AMD and GA, with multiple targets on goal. Elamipretide fits in nicely in terms of treating this chronic disease in a systemic fashion to benefit our patients.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Disclosures: Dr. Khanani serves as a consultant to Stealth BioTherapeutics. Stealth had no input into or control over the content of this series. The content was chosen and prepared independently by HCPLive.