QLT Inc. and Novartis Ophthalmics, the eye health unit of Novartis AG, today announced that the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products (CPMP) of the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA), has adopted a positive opinion on Visudyne® (verteporfin) therapy to also include the treatment of patients with evidence of recent or ongoing disease progression in occult subfoveal choroidal neovascularization (CNV) secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness among people over the age of 50.
The CPMP opinion will now be considered by the European Commission, which should make a final decision within three months regarding marketing authorization in the European Union.
Visudyne therapy is the only drug approved for the treatment of certain forms of wet AMD. AMD consists of two forms: wet and dry. Although only 15% of AMD patients suffer from the wet form of the disease this type is more aggressive and accounts for approximately 90% of severe vision loss. Approximately 500,000 new cases of the wet form of AMD occur each year worldwide, and this estimate is expected to grow dramatically as the population ages.
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