The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

We are at the Retina Society 2026 in Los Angeles. And today I gave a presentation looking at for patients who are high-treatment-burden individuals with neovascular AMD, how they do with the port delivery system with ranibizumab (Susvimo; Genentech). In order to answer this question, we used the Belvedere study, which is a phase 4 study. It actually looked at endothelial cell counts, but a preliminary analysis of 84 patients in this study was used to understand how they did in terms of their vision and their anatomy. And what we defined as “high treatment burden” was having at least 9 injections annualized prior to getting the port delivery system.

In that group of 84 who ended up ultimately enrolling in the study, who got the port delivery system, only 1 patient ended up needing supplemental therapy. And that’s a really profound result, because when we think about individuals who are getting bevacizumab (Avastin; Genentech) or aflibercept 2 mg (Eylea; Regeneron) and then switched over to faricimab (Vabysmo; Genentech) or aflibercept 8 mg (Eylea HD; Regeneron), typically the extension that we perceive is about 2 to 3 weeks. And that’s a very meaningful and impactful one. But if you’re getting injections every 4 weeks, and then you’re sort of maxing out at 6 or 7 weeks, that’s still very high treatment frequency for the patient. And so that’s what drew me to the port delivery system as a potential modality to try and get patients out to a very long window of time between treatments.

Now, the port delivery system is a surgical device. It has its own risk associated with this. And what we did was, we also looked at the risk profile going from the phase 2 to the phase 3 to the phase 4 program. What we had noted was that the rates of vitreous hemorrhage were decreasing across all phases of the program. Conjunctival erosion was going down. Presumably, this is happening because the same investigators are enrolling in these clinical trials and they’re getting more experience with the surgical device. So it goes to show you we can improve the overall safety despite the fact that this is a surgical implantation of the device, but there are low-level risks that we have to consider, which is the risk of retinal detachment and then the risk of late endophthalmitis. So if you are going to embark on this and if you think that this is the right strategy for you, I think it’s really important to be very familiar with the surgical steps and to execute it to perfection.

Thank you. RP