The TRUCKEE study is a real-world, collaborative effort to investigate the efficacy, durability, and safety of a monoclonal antibody treatment called faricimab in patients suffering from neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) in clinical practice. Texas Retina Associates’ Ashkan Abbey, MD, serves as an investigator for the study and contributed to the 6-month results published in the latest issue of the medical journal Eye.
With nAMD, also known as wet AMD, abnormal blood vessels grow under the retina and may leak, resulting in accumulation of blood or other fluid. This can cause scarring of the macula, the center of the retina responsible for sharp, straight-ahead vision. Patients with nAMD often experience sudden and severe vision loss.
Intravitreal injections of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) agents are the most common treatment for nAMD. Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January 2022, faricimab is a new bispecific, monoclonal antibody that targets two pathways of nAMD: VEGF-A and angiopoetin-2 (Ang-2), another type of growth factor that has been found to promote vascular instability and leakage.
So far, the TRUCKEE study has found that faricimab demonstrated improvement or maintenance of visual acuity for patients with nAMD, along with rapid improvement of retinal thickening, subretinal fluid accumulation and retinal pigment epithelial detachment. In addition, the drug has been well-tolerated with low incidence of treatable intraocular inflammation.
You can access the full Eye article here.
Dr. Abbey serves as Texas Retina Associates’ Director of Research for Dallas and cares for patients in our Dallas Main and Rockwall offices. You can learn more about him here.