February 17, 2023
Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Waltham, MA) today announced that the U.S. FDA has approved SYFOVRE™ (pegcetacoplan injection) for the treatment of geographic atrophy (GA) secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD). SYFOVRE is the first and only FDA-approved treatment for GA, a leading cause of blindness that impacts more than one million people in the U.S. and five million people worldwide.
“The approval of SYFOVRE is the most important event in retinal ophthalmology in more than a decade,” said Eleonora Lad, M.D., Ph.D., lead investigator for the OAKS study, director of ophthalmology clinical research, associate professor of ophthalmology, Duke University Medical Center. “Until now, there have been no approved therapies to offer people living with GA... With SYFOVRE, we finally have a safe and effective GA treatment for this devastating disease, with increasing effects over time.”
The approval of SYFOVRE is based on positive results from the Phase 3 OAKS and DERBY studies at 24 months across a broad and representative population of patients. SYFOVRE is approved for GA patients with or without subfoveal involvement and provides dosing flexibility for patients and physicians with a flexible dosing regimen. In the OAKS and DERBY studies, SYFOVRE reduced the rate of GA lesion growth compared to sham and demonstrated increasing treatment effects over time, with the greatest benefit (up to 36% reduction in lesion growth with monthly treatment in DERBY) occurring between months 18-24.
