Q&A: An analysis of patients who received pegcetacoplan and anti-VEGF for GA and wet AMD

Nimesh A. Patel, MD, FASRS, at the 2025 ASRS meeting

Nimesh A. Patel, MD, FASRS, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and the director of pediatric retina at Mass Eye and Ear and Boston Children's, spoke with Ophthalmology Times at the 2025 annual scientific meeting of the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS), which was held in Long Beach, California, from July 30 through August 2, 2025. At this meeting, he gave a presentation titled, "A descriptive analysis of patients who received pegcetacoplan and anti-VEGF for the treatment of geographic atrophy and neovascular AMD."

As geographic atrophy (GA) continues to be a key area of research, this information helps the field to understand the how current approved treatments can benefit patients and slow disease progression. Patel noted the source of the data used in the study was from the Vestrum database.

Note: The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ophthalmology Times: Can you share what you presented here at the ASRS 2025 meeting?

Nimesh A. Patel, MD, FASRS: So our study was a real-world study using the Vestrum database to assess usage trends for pegcetacoplan and anti-complement treatment. The most interesting finding was that 30% of patients had neovascular AMD at the time of geographic atrophy diagnosis, and 25% of patients are receiving combination therapy with anti-complement and anti-VEGF. The patients that were more likely to be treated with pegcetacoplan included those with moderate visual acuity, loss, bilateral geographic atrophy, and subfoveal involvement.

OT: Were there any particularly interesting or surprising points that was found through this analysis?

Patel: Also, there's a pretty quick treatment for the second eye in patients with bilateral GA in 2 months, about 60% of the patients are getting their second eye treated. And in 3 months, 80% of their eyes are getting treated. A participating group of large retinal specialists, and the interesting part is actually 90% of those retina specialists are prescribing anti-complement therapy, and we had 9000 patients in our study.