Hawk and harrier: phase 3, multicenter, randomizaed, double-masked trials of brolucizumab for neovascular age-related macular degeneration

The authors are commenting on the study entitled “Hawk and Harrier: phase 3, multicenter, randomized, double-masked trials of brolucizumab for neovascular age-related macular degeneration” published by Dugel et al. in Ophthalmology 2020;127(1):72-84, which prospectively compared the efficacy of brolucizumab (a single-chain antibody fragment that inhibits vascular endothelial growth factor-A) with aflibercept in patients with active, chronic, treatment-naïve choroidal neovascularization secondary to neovascular age-related macular degeneration in two similarly designed trials (Hawk and Harrier). After 48 weeks brolucizumab demonstrated noninferioriy to aflibercept in best-corrected visual acuity change from baseline and > 50% of brolucizumab 6 mg-treated eyes were maintained on an injection every 12 week dosing interval through week 48. However, the validation, extrapolation, and generalizability of these findings can be made only by statistical analyses including all the missing baseline potential predictive factors referred to above by us in addition to the baseline characteristics already evaluated in this study.