Novartis Eye Drug Works With Fewer Injections Than Rival

Cutting the frequency of injections could also give RTH258 an edge over Lucentis, an eye drug that Roche sells in the US and Novartis sells elsewhere

- 

A Novartis drug to treat a leading cause of vision loss in people over 65 does not need to be injected as frequently as a rival medicine from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to be effective, clinical trials showed recently.

Novartis said the trials showed its RTH258 drug would reduce the injection burden for patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD).

Head-to-head late-stage trials showed RTH258, which goes by the generic name brolucizumab, worked as well as Regeneron's Eylea, with just over half the patients needing doses every 12 weeks, rather than every eight weeks for Eylea.