Akari Therapeutics, Plc announced new preclinical data indicating that nomacopan significantly reduced both retinal inflammation and intraocular VEGF. Treatment of back-of-the-eye diseases, including angiogenic ocular diseases with new blood vessel growth such as diabetic retinopathy and wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), is a multi-billion dollar market. VEGF promotes angiogenesis in these latter conditions, and inhibition of VEGF with antibodies such as Lucentis and antagonists such as Macugen and Eyelea form the mainstay of treatment of wet AMD. In contrast, complement inhibitors are being explored as a treatment for dry AMD. PAS-nomacopan was found to reduce intraocular VEGF levels by as much as the anti-VEGF antibody with 74% (p=0.04) and 68% (p=0.05) reductions respectively, compared to saline control. Furthermore, while clinically assessed inflammation increased in both the control and anti-VEGF groups by 49% and 33%, respectively, PAS-nomacopan treatment showed a 9% reduction in inflammation assessed by retinal fundoscopy (p=0.02), supporting nomacopan’s therapeutic activity across multiple pathogenic pathways. PAS-nomacopan, which has a very large functional molecular weight of 670kDa, due to use of the PASylationTM technology (Kuhn et al. 20161), was more effective than nomacopan (17kDa) in reducing both VEGF levels and inflammation, probably reflecting longer residency time of PAS-nomacopan in the eye.