Q&A: Timothy Lai on the SALWEEN trial

Photo of Timothy Lai, MD, at EURETINA 2025 in Paris, France

Timothy Lai, a clinical professor honorary at the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, presented the one-year data from the Salween study at the EURETINA meeting in Paris, France. He spoke with the Eye Care Network to share some highlights from this presentation.

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

Ophthalmology Times: You are here at EURETINA 2025 to share some important results from the SALWEEN trial. Can you share a few highlights from this presentation?

Timothy Lai, MD: Yes, I'm here in EURETINA Paris to present the SALWEEN 1-year data. So for those of you not too familiar with SALWEEN, so it's basically a study conducted in Asia looking at the use of faricimab in patients with symptomatic polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy or PCV. So in this study, we've already presented the interim analysis data at week 16 in the end of last year. So here is the primary endpoint data presented in this meeting.

OT: What was the patient make-up of this study?

Lai: So overall, 135 patients with PCV were recruited into the study, and the results were very encouraging. So these patients received basically 4 loading doses of faricimab, and then they had the disease activity assessment, and then would be allocated to either Q8, Q12, or Q16 weekly injection in the first year. In the second year, these patients have the ability to further extend to Q20 dosing if they met the extension criteria.

OT: You mentioned the results were encouraging. What were those results?

Lai: So at the 1-year primary endpoint, the best correct vision actually gained 8.9 letters. This is very encouraging, because these patients had very good visual acuity at baseline to start with. Another very important result is looking at the ICG angiography polypoidal lesion regression rate.

So last year, we reported at the interim analysis, it was 50%. This year, the 1-year end point, we've saw 61% of patients actually had complete polypoidal lesion regression. This rate is very remarkable for using faricimad monotherapy, just monotherapy anti-VEGF. So if you compare with previous results of other anti-VEGF agents, for example, in PLANET or in the EVEREST studies, so this 61% rate is very good. Also we achieve also over 80% of polypoidal lesion inactivation in these patients.

So the design of the study was based on the TENAYA and LUCERNE studies, which was a phase 3 study looking at the use of faricimab for neovascular AMD patients. But as you know, in Asia, PCV is a very important problem, because many patients presenting with neovascular AMD were actually due to PCV. So in this SALWEEN study, we specifically look at patients who had only PCV. It was diagnosed by the investigator, but all these patients required ICG angiography to have the diagnosis, and then we would recruit the patient have the 4 loading doses of faricimab and then the treatment extent similar to TENAYA and LUCERNE studes. So the results are very important, because it actually showed us how to use faricimab in these patients with PCV, and it showed that at the efficacy as well as the safety is very favorable.

OT: What future results can we look forward to for this study?

Lai: So the SALWEEN study is actually a 2-year study, so we will be finishing off the patient follow-up, the last visit will be happening in January next year, so hopefully next year, we can present the 2-year findings to you. So in terms of the anatomy, we also saw very rapid reduction in macular fluid in terms of the central subfield thickness. So after 4 loading doses, it reduced very well. And then with the 1-year follow-up, this was actually maintained quite well. And we also got a very high, 78% of patients, have absence of subretinal and intraretinal fluid at the 1-year mark.