Apellis to Showcase Leadership in Retina at Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Annual Meeting

• 10 accepted abstracts include five oral presentations from pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) collaboration
  
  
• Presentations support the potential of intravitreal pegcetacoplan, an investigational targeted C3 therapy, as the first treatment for geographic atrophy (GA)
  

WALTHAM, Mass., April 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: APLS), a global biopharmaceutical company and leader in targeted C3 therapies, today announced that 10 abstracts were accepted for presentation at the virtual Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Annual Meeting to be held May 1-7, 2021. These abstracts feature a breadth of data, from presentations that demonstrate the potential of AI to analyze the growth of GA lesions, to new safety and efficacy data for pegcetacoplan, an investigational targeted C3 therapy, in GA.

“New imaging approaches, AI-based technologies, and ultimately the development of new medicines will transform the treatment of geographic atrophy,” said Federico Grossi, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of Apellis. “Our data across these disciplines at ARVO exemplify our leadership in the retina and underscore the potential of pegcetacoplan to become the first medicine for people living with GA, a relentless disabling disease.”

The five oral presentations include studies that evaluated the use of AI to identify, monitor, and predict the growth of GA lesions. The analyses were performed on retinal scans from the positive Phase 2 FILLY study, which showed that pegcetacoplan reduced the growth rate of GA lesions, and were conducted in collaboration with the Ophthalmic Image Analysis (OPTIMA) group at the Medical University of Vienna, one of the world’s leading data analysis laboratories for retinal diseases.

“Our collaboration showed that AI can distinctly and reliably measure GA disease progression,” said Ursula Schmidt-Erfurth, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University Eye Hospital, Vienna, Austria. “The results support the use of AI analytics as an ideal tool to evaluate disease activity as well as therapeutic efficacy in GA.”

The oral presentations from the AI collaboration include:

• AI-Based Quantification of Photoreceptor Maintenance in the Treatment of Geographic Atrophy Secondary to AMD in the FILLY Trial – May 2, 11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. ET
  
• SD-OCT Based Analysis of Treatment Effects on Geographic Atrophy Secondary to AMD in the FILLY Trial of Pegcetacoplan – May 2, 11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. ET
• Monitoring GA Lesion Size on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) Using Automated Deep Learning-Based Image Segmentation in the FILLY Phase 2 Clinical Trial – May 2, 11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. ET