Alcon terminates anecortave acetate development programme

Alcon has terminated its development programme of anecortave acetate in patients with age-related macular degeneration.

The programme was designed to evaluate the benefit of the compound on the risk for developing sight-threatening choroidal neovascularisation secondary to age-related macular degeneration.

Alcon made this decision after the publication of a planned interim analysis of two studies – C-02-60 A and C-02-60 B conducted after 2,546 patients completed the two-year time point.

“In this analysis, anecortave acetate showed no effect on the primary or secondary endpoints,” Alcon said.

It added that in addition to terminating these two studies, the firm also terminated two other studies conducted in Asia with identical design, known as C-04-30 and C-05-34.

Despite this announcement, Alcon announced its intention to continue to study the compound administered as an anterior juxtascleral depot in open-angle glaucoma patients to reduce intraocular pressure.

In March 2008, Alcon presented data from this study to the annual meeting of the American Glaucoma Society.

In the trial, both the 7.5mg and 15mg dose of anecortave acetate showed significantly lower intraocular pressures than vehicle at the three-month primary efficacy endpoint.