EURETINA 2025: The changing face of clinical endpoints in AMD trials

At this year's congress of the European Society of Retina Specialists (EURETINA), retina specialists shared a wide range of approaches to diagnosing and addressing retinal pathologies. Age-related macular degeneration was one of the most popular topics in Paris, France, where the EURETINA meeting ran from September 4 to 7. This year, the conversation expanded beyond late-stage AMD and geographic atrophy (GA). The wide-ranging scientific program covered earlier stages of the disease as well.

During the congress, we spoke about AMD with Robyn Guymer, AM, MBBS, PhD, FRANZCO, FAHMS, who is a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne in Australia and Deputy Director of the Center for Eye Research Australia. "I had the opportunity to talk about intermediate AMD, which is fantastic," she said. "We're not spending all our time talking about geographic atrophy and neovascular AMD."

Prof. Guymer talked about early surrogate endpoints for trials in intermediate AMD, including signifiers that would be present on an optical coherence tomography (OCT) scan. "in the first instance, I talked about things that you can see on an OCT scan that give you an indication that the eye is more at risk of progression," she said. "So things like large drusen, hyperreflective foci, and then all those early signs of atrophy: nascent geographic atrophy, iRORA, cRORA." In her presentation, Prof. Guymer described the heightened risk factors for GA compared with eyes that do not have those early signs.

She also described changes in the ellipsoid zone and external limiting membrane, both critical characteristics of the outer retinal layer.

Watch the full video to hear her remarks.