Outlook Therapeutics, Inc. announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a CRL to the company’s BLA for ONS-5010, an investigational ophthalmic formulation of bevacizumab under development to treat wet AMD.
While the FDA acknowledged the NORSE TWO pivotal trial met its safety and efficacy endpoints, the Agency concluded it could not approve the BLA during this review cycle due to several CMC issues, open observations from pre-approval manufacturing inspections, and a lack of substantial evidence.
“We continue to believe in the public health need to provide the retina community with an FDA-approved bevacizumab treatment option for wet AMD. We will request a formal meeting as soon as possible with the FDA to further understand the BLA deficiencies and how best to resolve them. Following this meeting with the FDA, the Company will be able to discuss next steps and the expected timing for resolution,” said Russell Trenary, president and CEO of Outlook Therapeutics.
Julia A. Haller, MD, Ophthalmologist-in-Chief at Wills Eye Hospital and an Outlook Therapeutics Board member, commented, “The retina community needs an FDA-approved ophthalmic bevacizumab to deliver an alternative targeted on-label treatment for patients with wet AMD.
About ONS-5010 / LYTENAVA (bevacizumab-vikg)
ONS-5010 is an investigational ophthalmic formulation of bevacizumab under development as an intravitreal injection for the treatment of wet AMD and other retinal diseases.
Because no FDA-approved ophthalmic formulations of bevacizumab are available currently, clinicians wishing to treat retinal patients with bevacizumab have had to use unapproved repackaged IV bevacizumab provided by compounding pharmacies—products that have known risks of contamination and inconsistent potency and availability.
If approved, ONS-5010 would provide an FDA-approved option for physicians that currently have no choice but to prescribe unapproved repackaged oncologic IV bevacizumab from compounding pharmacies for the treatment of wet AMD.
Bevacizumab-vikg is a recombinant humanized monoclonal antibody (mAb) that selectively binds with high affinity to all isoforms of human vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and neutralizes VEGF’s biologic activity through a steric blocking of the binding of VEGF to its receptors Flt-1 (VEGFR-1) and KDR (VEGFR-2) on the surface of endothelial cells.
Following intravitreal injection, the binding of bevacizumab-vikg to VEGF prevents the interaction of VEGF with its receptors on the surface of endothelial cells, reducing endothelial cell proliferation, vascular leakage, and new blood vessel formation in the retina.