Merck Starts Late-Stage Study on Recently Acquired Ophthalmology Drug

Merck (MRK) announced that it started the phase IIb/III BRUNELLO study on Restoret (MK-3000), a novel investigational Wnt agonist antibody, to treat diabetic macular edema (DME).This study will evaluate the safety and efficacy of two dose levels (high and low doses) of the drug compared with Roche’s (RHHBY) Lucentis (ranibizumab) in patients with DME.Restoret was added to Merck’s pipeline after it completed the acquisition of London-based private biotech EyeBio for around $1.3 billion in July. Following thi ...