Q&A: Carl D. Regillo, MD, shares updates on the VERONA trial for DME

Photo of Carl D. Regillo, MD, taken by Ophthalmology Times at the 2025 Retina World Congress meeting held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

At the 2025 Retina World Congress meeting held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Carl Regillo, Director of the Retina Service at Wills Eye Hospital and partner at Mid Atlantic Retina, met with Ophthalmology Times to discuss the VERONA study and its implications for ophthalmology. The study focused on EYP-1901, a novel treatment for center-involved diabetic macular edema (DME) with decreased vision.

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

Ophthalmology Times: At this meeting, you shared insights on the VERONA trial. Can you share some key takeaways from this data?

Carl D. Regillo, MD: The VERONA study was a very successful study. It's our first glimpse at EYP-1901, which is varolanib packaged in a bio-erodible polymer injected intravitreally to treat center-involved DME, with decreased vision. In both doses tested compared to aflibercept, it performed very well, in fact, better than a single-dose of aflibercept in vision improvement and anatomy, that is, disease control. It gave us a very durable effect in the majority of patients not needing any supplemental anti-VEGF therapy for 6 months.

OT: What do you find especially exciting about your work with clinical trial research?

Regillo: What's exciting about clinical trial works is it gives us the opportunity to play a role or a part in what's going to make our field better and enhance the care of our patients for these common sight threatening diseases. We've made a lot of progress in the past few decades through collaboration with industry for new therapeutics.

OT: As you look at clinical trials and ongoing research, where do you see the future of ophthalomology heading?

Regillo: So the future of ophthalmology in general is bright, but particularly so in retina, we still have unmet needs. We still have conditions with sub-optimal response or outcomes. We have high treatment burden with our anti-VEGF biologics, which work great for most patients, but again, not in all and sometimes not very durable. Of course, that means challenges getting patients to the office on a frequent, regular basis to get optimal outcomes. So in general, it's a very exciting time, because we're seeing progress towards meeting these unmet needs, getting better outcomes, and that includes decreasing the treatment burden that patients suffer, especially with common diseases like wet AMD and diabetic retinopathy.