Updated: Apellis vows to be transparent about eye inflammation tied to Syfovre, but questions remain

Apel­lis Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals still can’t pin­point ex­act­ly what’s be­hind the rare cas­es of eye in­flam­ma­tion that’s been re­port­ed in pa­tients tak­ing its ge­o­graph­ic at­ro­phy drug Syfovre. And de­spite ex­ecs’ pledge to be trans­par­ent, the lack of an­swers is scar­ing in­vestors.

Both the Amer­i­can So­ci­ety of Reti­na Spe­cial­ists’ Re­search and Safe­ty in Ther­a­peu­tics Com­mit­tee (ASRS ReST com­mit­tee) — which first flagged the safe­ty con­cerns — and Apel­lis is­sued up­dates over the week­end on their re­spec­tive re­views, with slight dis­crep­an­cies. The ASRS ReST com­mit­tee con­firmed the dis­cov­ery of two more cas­es of reti­nal vas­culi­tis in the past two weeks, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of cas­es to eight; mean­while, by Apel­lis’ count, there have been sev­en con­firmed cas­es of oc­clu­sive/non-oc­clu­sive reti­nal vas­culi­tis since Syfovre’s launch in March.

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