MacuSight’s Perceiva May Treat Diabetic Macular Edema and Wet Macular Degeneration

November 2, 2009

Dr. Randall Wong

MacuSight’s “Perceiva,” receives FDA fast track status for the treatment of diabetic macular edema. The drug is an ocular formulation of the company’s Sirolimus, an agent found to be effective in controlling neovascularization, inhibits inflammation, vascular permeability and vascular proliferation and fibrosis.

Sirolimus is an mTOR inhibitor. mTor inhibitors block mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) kinase, a key protein in cells that regulates cell proliferation, cell growth and cell survival.

Because of its multi-faceted properties, the company also hopes that Perceiva will be useful in the treatment of wet macular degeneration. The company is conducting Phase 2 studies both for diabetic macular edema, macular degeneration and dry eye syndrome.

What does this mean? This means yet another drug may be introduced focused at the treatment of both macular degeneration diabetic macular edema. It is interesting to me that these diseases are so closely related to the physiology of vascular tumors. It will be helpful to have yet another multi-functional retina drug in our arsenal, similar to Avastin™ and Lucentis™.

Randall V. Wong, M.D.
www.RetinaEyeDoctor.com
Retina Specialist